The poems are from The Silence of Men. Here they are:

Light

In the dream, my life was smoke: I couldn’t breathe.
So I ran, unwrap­ping myself down the beach
till your skin, the ocean, lapped at my knees.
I dove in. Your voice was a cur­rent,
a melody gath­er­ing words to itself
for us to sing, and we sang them,
and they swirled around us, iri­des­cent fish
bring­ing light to the world you were for me;

and then I was water, a river
wash­ing the night from your flesh,
and I cra­dled your body ris­ing in me
till you were clean, glow­ing,
and when you sur­faced, glis­ten­ing,
there was not an inch of you I didn’t cling to.

Ethics Of The Fathers

Moses received the Torah from Sinai
and passed it on to Joshua, who gave
it in his turn to The Elders, and love
or duty, or maybe both, explain why
we still hand it down, even if we die
doing so. The Church burned us alive,
the Romans did worse…but you who give
your­selves to goy­ishe women, you lie
with their gods as well, and so we cast you out.
The rabbi paused, whis­pered Come back, and left
the stage. No applause. Behind me, a man laughed.
Beside me, a woman squirmed in her seat.

In love, my love, I’ve given myself to you,
nei­ther god nor god­dess, and not a Jew.

After Drought

Knees rooted in the bed on either side
of your belly, my body’s a stalk of wheat
bent in sum­mer wind, a bam­boo shoot
ris­ing, an orchid, and then all at once a cloud
swelling, a swal­low sculpt­ing air, a freed
white dove. You pull me down, but you are hot
beneath me, and the gust that is my own heat
lifts me away: I’m not ready. Out­side,
foot­steps, voices. Two men. Gig­gling, we pull
the sheet around us till they pass, but if some­one
does see, what will they have seen? A cou­ple
mak­ing love. No. More than that: They will
have seen the com­ing of the rain; they will
have seen us bathe in it, and they will say Amen.