​
Ideal Disorders


Miles of rows of orange trash cans
all ah-ing to the sky was somebody's
idea of order at Coney Island;
another guy thought up the morning crew's
ragged line and lowered eyes — the daily stalk
of Parks Department foragers in green
straggling on heavy shoes and dreamily
lancing gum wrappers into gunny sacks.
Neither was anybody's idea of fun
 — which was more like disorder, more like
just dropping public verticality
for open lolling about and wallowing,
down at sea level, off-guard, up-ended;
more like everybody getting together
and making a sea of "all of us"
alive beside the sea, ourselves
earth's numberless sands outfacing
the mirror shattered below the whole sky,
the slow monster under the empty motion.
Our being there was beelines over bodies,
was shortcuts swarming toward pleasure,
and half the fun was keeping it short,
and more than fun our thatch and hubbub,
our pullulation, of crossing purposes
filling the silence on the waters — until,
from the groin of comings and goings,
at three, at half past three exactly,
we hurled off a blanket to the day's height
the flying youth and cheering crowd — the sun! — 
and peopled space with celebration.




A New World


Torn maps, pages in spume
Crashing furniture of the shore
The nimble students leaping off,
who always from farther out
come riding toward us,
straddling desktops of the waves
 — the water's glittering people,
the little pilgrims of light.

For these wavelets' chancing greenhorns,
our parents as they were, our future kids,
we the children of immigrants
walk in greeting at water's edge
and sing out the primer of fresh air:
Sky, president of thunder and smiles,
many-headed senates of the sea,
the jetties' bearded dripping courts,
and bully spanked home to his bad castle,
old death voted down the cellar stairs.
Everything, set free, arrives and shines.
All is a globe of recognitions.
Every creature of the place
 — Utah, Kentucky, Idaho — 
lit with intelligence,
glows as if about to speak;
wherever we look is looking back
with our gazes' own intensity,
the sun comes up, the waves
come up, asking our names.

And who are we, standing around
in bathing suits on the brink of everything?
We are Americans at the beach.

White confusions
Springs of the sea-winds' surging
 — inland
toward mountains and prairies,
toward happiness.




The Gymnasts


Legs v-ed out from the groin's nugget
 — the many figured as a single man.
Or the milling centipede of crossed purposes
pulling itself together and rising
from the ground up, in honor of itself.
And not to form the structures only, but
to be present in the flesh and confirmed
by others present equally to them
 — leaving as early almost as the sun,
they come down from separate rooms, starting
from Elizabeth or Hoboken or the Bronx,
walking on their hands among us now
or spelling out with their spinning persons
leaping sentences of cartwheels and vaults.
Nearby, the body-builders are defining
their "pecs," biceps, "glutes" — glowing maps
of somber worlds in single display,
so distant that they sink slowly
into the background of every sky.
But here the gymnasts build themselves
together, embody what they illustrate:
serenity of power in action, strength
moving in matters of common concern;
and, by wall or mound or pyramid,
by honeycomb, womb, huddle, swarm
and tower — these sociable forms, forms
of habitation — in the middle of nowhere
bestow a sense to everything.

​


The Tower


A tower of men,
a tongue toward flaming heaven.
Now the last one goes up quick,
scaling fire to reach the baby
in the window of the burning tenement.
Everywhere, jealous angels look down.
The tower blazes up higher.
The faces puff in fury.
If we had breath to call him back ...
His daring that makes the world come true.
 — ​Arms uplifted,
he holds the whole sky open,
plucks the radiance from the fire,
the baby Now from the sky's never!
Oh, we gasp, Ah, we breathe out.
                              Just 
as quick, the tower tumbles apart,
leaping every which way down.
Their yawp sends them crashing off,
shin and thigh, to slaughter waves.
And we, set free, have walked away
on the sand's radiant reaches.                             
                              Now 
​the little kids go racing after
and smack up geysers, shouting.