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At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world. She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those who can't sleep, those who never awaken. My granddaughter sleeps on the breast of her mother with milk on her mouth. A fly contemplates the sweetness of lactose. Her father is wrapped in the blanket of nightmares. For safety he approaches the red hills near Thoreau. They recognize him and sing for him. Her mother has business in the house of chaos. She is a prophet dis- guised as a young mother who is looking for a job. She appears at the door of my dreams and we put the house back together. Panther watches as human and animal souls are lifted to the heavens by rain clouds to partake of songs of beautiful thunder. Others are led by deer and antelope in the wistful hours to the vil- lages of their ancestors. There they eat cornmeal cooked with berries that stain their lips with purple while the tree of life flickers in the sun. It's October, though the season before dawn is always winter. On the city streets of this desert town lit by chemical yellow travelers search for home. Some have been drinking and intimate with strangers. Others are escapees from the night shift, sip lukewarm coffee, shift gears to the other side of darkness. One woman stops at a red light, turns over a worn tape to the last chorus of a whispery blues. She has decided to live another day. The stars take notice, as do the half-asleep flowers, prickly pear and chinaberry tree who drink exhaust into their roots, into the earth. She guns the light to home where her children are asleep and may never know she ever left. That their fate took a turn in the land of nightmares toward the sun may be untouchable knowledge. It is a sweet sound. The panther relative yawns and puts her head between her paws. She dreams of the house of panthers and the seven steps to grace.

^ now you have to go back through Ohio just to manage a few sweaters because it’s getting cold out there pack two grey-green duffels / most of your clothes are torn what else                    do you have to show for yourself stay in motels     drink bourbon & cut your fingertips on the zippers of your jeans / throw the oranges at the hero ships on the walls                     forget her ^ her touch—nearly seven hundred days away / the desk littered with candles & letters / last night folk music & a light bulb     swinging     humming sink backed up & the water flooded the dirty blue tiles—you just ducked out in another town you can imagine fresh basil in the kitchen window    orange peels ground down to dust          bicycles          farmland          the peripheral at peace with the eventual ^ you could show up at someone’s door          unannounced by the wind ^ collect weeds as though they are scarce sleep next to the man who takes care of the trees          the edge is close between two bodies          smokestacks line the sky ^ troubled by your body, you’re trembling at the gas station stay in a poorly insulated farmhouse north of the city wake to a lack of rain, an unbroken sky remember the moon from last night that seemed to drift if god were uneasy you would not know

On such a day we put him in a box And carried him to that last house, the grave; All round the people walked upon the streets Without once thinking that he had gone. Their hard heels clacked upon the pavement stones. A voiceless change had muted all his thoughts To a deep significance we could not know; And yet we knew that he knew all at last. We heard with grave wonder the falling clods, And with grave wonder met the loud day. The night would come and day, but we had died. With new green sod the melancholy gate Was closed and locked, and we went pitiful. Our clacking heels upon the pavement stones Did knock and knock for Death to let us in.

The naked earth is warm with Spring, And with green grass and bursting trees Leans to the sun's gaze glorying, And quivers in the sunny breeze; And life is Colour and Warmth and Light, And a striving evermore for these; And he is dead who will not fight, And who dies fighting has increase. The fighting man shall from the sun Take warmth, and life from glowing earth; Speed with the light-foot winds to run And with the trees to newer birth; And find, when fighting shall be done, Great rest, and fulness after dearth. All the bright company of Heaven Hold him in their bright comradeship, The Dog star, and the Sisters Seven, Orion's belt and sworded hip: The woodland trees that stand together, They stand to him each one a friend; They gently speak in the windy weather; They guide to valley and ridges end. The kestrel hovering by day, And the little owls that call by night, Bid him be swift and keen as they, As keen of ear, as swift of sight. The blackbird sings to him: "Brother, brother, If this be the last song you shall sing, Sing well, for you may not sing another; Brother, sing." In dreary doubtful waiting hours, Before the brazen frenzy starts, The horses show him nobler powers; — O patient eyes, courageous hearts! And when the burning moment breaks, And all things else are out of mind, And only joy of battle takes Him by the throat and makes him blind, Through joy and blindness he shall know, Not caring much to know, that still Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so That it be not the Destined Will. The thundering line of battle stands, And in the air Death moans and sings; But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

It was Adolphe Sax, remember, not Saxo Grammaticus, who gets the ovation. And by the time he had brought all the components together–the serpentine shape, the single reed, the fit of the fingers, the upward tilt of the golden bell– it was already 1842, and one gets the feeling that it was also very late at night. There is something nocturnal about the sound, something literally horny, as some may have noticed on that historic date when the first odd notes wobbled out of his studio into the small, darkened town, summoning the insomniacs (who were up waiting for the invention of jazz) to their windows, but leaving the sleepers undisturbed, evening deepening and warming the waters of their dreams. For this is not the valved instrument of waking, more the smoky voice of longing and loss, the porpoise cry of the subconscious. No one would ever think of blowing reveille on a tenor without irony. The men would only lie in their metal bunks, fingers twined behind their heads, afloat on pools of memory and desire. And when the time has come to rouse the dead, you will not see Gabriel clipping an alto around his numinous neck. An angel playing the world’s last song on a glistening saxophone might be enough to lift them back into the light of earth, but really no further. Once resurrected, they would only lie down in the long cemetery grass or lean alone against a lugubrious yew and let the music do the ascending– curling snakes charmed from their baskets– while they wait for the shrill trumpet solo, that will blow them all to kingdom come.

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

Regla lesbia: Flexible rule that may be adjusted to any body to be measured. Compare regla fija: standard. —The Velázquez Dictionary I. In the garden, it’s there. Even when you’re inside you feel it, as though it were you standing naked among the weeds, the tips of the bougainvillea bursting into flame, your nipples ruffled like the skin of a lake by a breeze. You worship the invisible body like an old-fashioned lover, from afar, loving the specificity of space between you. Sometimes at night it stretches out on the empty side of the bed, stares at you with the length of its invisible surface. Every contour of your body not filled by you is molded by the attentiveness of the invisible body, whose breath surrounds you. It’s more than prayer it wants—more than language, with its conditions. The invisible body demands you invent new senses to receive it, new places on your body to marvel at its subtlety, like the eyes of the deaf percussionist that perceive sound. II. The invisible body wants you to become a satellite dish, tuned to what exists only because your body calls to it. Like the woman who had her kitchen remodeled to make room for the microwave she’d entered a contest for. Then won. III. When asked whether falling in love was about acquisitiveness, about the ego, the seventy-five-year-old poet responded that the ego had nothing to do with it; it was the need for union with the beloved. Rumi asks,Who is it we spend our entire lives loving? IV. How, then, do you measure the invisible body, which resists commitment but is faithful? Is it clear who the beloved is, when no clear body exists that can be measured against a standard? V. The invisible body sometimes acquires a body—it’s so convincing, it takes you a while to figure out it’s really the invisible body. Like someone who has been reading your journal, it has decoded from your petty, daily complaints the open sesame that slides the stone from the hidden cave’s opening and cleans you out while you sleep, leaving a sarcastic note. It wants you to know it was doing you a favor, besides, how else did you think you’d discover the cave’s precise location? When Aphrodite sharpens you, you sacrifice a little of yourself, willingly, as a knife does, so that you may become better at it. VI. This is the point at which the invisible body speaks in italics, the Ouija board of poetry. In my mind, says the invisible body,that time capsule shuttling through space, I hold, in all the languages of the world, your love, rushed like holographic platters to a table, steaming into the future long after you’ve ceased to shine, the silver faces of your beloved bobbing out of the darkness, the black velvet pillow of your life on which you offer them for view. VII. The invisible body is created out of your longing, your longing compressing invisible molecules together into an absence you recognize. That is the way one blind man sees the world—after the fact, in photographs he took, once he had passed through it.

Your mother called it "doing the pressing," and you know now how right she was. There is something urgent here. Not even the hiss under each button or the yellow business ground in at the neck can make one instant of this work seem unimportant. You've been taught to turn the pocket corners and pick out the dark lint that collects there. You're tempted to leave it, but the old lessons go deeper than habits. Everyone else is asleep. The odor of sweat rises when you do under the armpits, the owner's particular smell you can never quite wash out. You'll stay up. You'll have your way, the final stroke and sharpness down the long sleeves, a truly permanent edge.

the templar halls of museums, for example, or the chambers of churches, and admire no more than the beauty there, or remember the graveness of stone, or whatever. You don’t have to do any better. You don’t have to understand the liturgy or know history to feel holy in a gallery or presbytery. It is enough to have come just so far. You need not be opened any more than does a door, standing ajar.

Lone amid the café’s cheer, Sad of heart am I to-night; Dolefully I drink my beer, But no single line I write. There’s the wretched rent to pay, Yet I glower at pen and ink: Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray, It is later than you think! Hello! there’s a pregnant phrase. Bravo! let me write it down; Hold it with a hopeful gaze, Gauge it with a fretful frown; Tune it to my lyric lyre ... Ah! upon starvation’s brink, How the words are dark and dire: It is later than you think. Weigh them well .... Behold yon band, Students drinking by the door, Madly merry,bock in hand, Saucers stacked to mark their score. Get you gone, you jolly scamps; Let your parting glasses clink; Seek your long neglected lamps: It is later than you think. Look again: yon dainty blonde, All allure and golden grace, Oh so willing to respond Should you turn a smiling face. Play your part, poor pretty doll; Feast and frolic, pose and prink; There’s the Morgue to end it all, And it’s later than you think. Yon’s a playwright — mark his face, Puffed and purple, tense and tired; Pasha-like he holds his place, Hated, envied and admired. How you gobble life, my friend; Wine, and woman soft and pink! Well, each tether has its end: Sir, it’s later than you think. See yon living scarecrow pass With a wild and wolfish stare At each empty absinthe glass, As if he saw Heaven there. Poor damned wretch, to end your pain There is still the Greater Drink. Yonder waits the sanguine Seine ... It is later than you think. Lastly, you who read; aye, you Who this very line may scan: Think of all you planned to do ... Have you done the best you can? See! the tavern lights are low; Black’s the night, and how you shrink! God! and is it time to go? Ah! the clock is always slow; It is later than you think; Sadly later than you think; Far, far later than you think.