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A brilliance takes up residence in flaws— a brilliance all the unchipped faces of design refuse. The wine collects its starlets at a lip's fault, sunlight where the nicked glass angles, and affection where the eye is least correctable, where arrows of unquivered light are lodged, where someone else's eyes have come to be concerned. For beauty's sake, assault and drive and burn the devil from the simply perfect sun. Demand a birthmark on the skin of love, a tremble in the touch, in come a cry, and let the silverware of nights be flecked, the moon pocked to distribute more or less indwelling alloys of its dim and shine by nip and tuck, by chance's dance of laws. The brightness drawn and quartered on a sheet, the moment cracked upon a bed, will last as if you soldered them with moon and flux. And break the bottle of the eye to see what lights are spun of accident and glass.

I felt suddenly convinced that I had feelings for the wallpaper. I was especially captivated by its blonde hair and bad dreams. I had the impression the wallpaper needed longer to properly 
respond. By the time I left, my affections had produced this abrasion on my cheek. People looked on the abrasion as unquestionable proof of my sincerity. The abrasion was produced by rubbing my face on the paper’s smooth surface. It only occurred to me later that it might have found this sensation disagreeable. But by then I had become known for my abrasion, and I seldom thought of, discussed, or in any way depended upon the wallpaper for anything. My affections, though, had produced upon the paper their own mark. To my irritation and gradual dismay, interest in the paper’s abrasion began to outweigh interest in my own; indeed, mine was starting to fade while the mark upon the paper had deepened with the passing of time. People liked to visit the paper in its room and probe their fingers into the widening tear, by now a gruesome black-edged wound. The silence of the paper during these incursions suggested to some condemnation of their curiosity, but to others implied approval. Some even speculated that the paper “enjoyed” the infringement of its surfaces, while most agreed it was a question of the paper enduring this indignity, having little or no opportunity to protest. Some visitors could not contain their enthusiasm, and over time other recesses were opened in the paper without its consent. The earliest admirers of the paper’s abrasion were heard lamenting the gulf between the paper’s current state and its previous appearance. They opined that to experience the abrasion now was to encounter a kind of mockery of the gentle and informal gesture it had once been. Others contended that while the paper’s condition was certainly different, it couldn’t be in any way “better” or “worse” than it had been 
originally; on the contrary, the paper, exhibiting as it did the marks of the affections spent upon it, was in every way a true record of the destruction this attention had wrought, and had become if anything a more moving testament, charting as it did the changing and accelerated passions of the times. In later phases of the paper’s deterioration some expressed admiration for the stoical indifference with which the paper withstood its abusers and wondered if such an attitude might not improve the willing and reciprocal style with which they and their contemporaries were accustomed to receiving each other’s gazes and caresses. Against the odds, this view seemed timely and took root in the populace, and to this day in all the estimations of historians and critics of culture it is widely held accountable for the period of dormancy and inertia among the youngest of our people, whose silence and repose has replaced the humors and rages of those whose desires had flown unchecked, who had coupled for so long with such energy and frequency.

In prison without being accused or reach your family or have a family            You have conscience heart trouble asthma manic-depressive (we lost the baby) no meds no one no window black water nail-scratched walls your pure face turned away embarrassed you who the earth was for.

I will grieve alone, As I strolled alone, years ago, down along The Ohio shore. I hid in the hobo jungle weeds Upstream from the sewer main, Pondering, gazing. I saw, down river, At Twenty-third and Water Streets By the vinegar works, The doors open in early evening. Swinging their purses, the women Poured down the long street to the river And into the river. I do not know how it was They could drown every evening. What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore, Drying their wings? For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia, Has only two shores: The one in hell, the other In Bridgeport, Ohio. And nobody would commit suicide, only To find beyond death Bridgeport, Ohio.

Right after the bomb, even before the ceiling And walls and floor are rearranging You and themselves into a different world, You must hold still, must wait for them To settle down in unpredictable ways, To bring their wars, shuddering, To an end, and only then should you begin Numbly to feel what freedom may be left To your feet or knees, to your elbows Or clenched fingers. Where you used to walk Or lean or lie down or fix your attention At a whim or stomp your foot Or slump in a chair, you'll find a new Architecturally unsound floor-plan To contend with, if you can move At all. Now you may remember others Who were somewhere near you before This breakdown of circumstances. Caught by surprise Like you, they may be waiting separately At their own levels, inside their own portions Of your incoherent flat. They may be thinking Of you, as you are of them, and wondering Whether some common passageway, no matter How crooked or narrow, might still exist Between you, through which you might share the absence Of food and water and the cold comfort Of daylight. They may be expecting you To arrive at any moment, to crawl through dust And fire to their rescue as they find their bodies Growing more stiff, assuming even more Unusual attitudes at every turn Of a second hand, at every sound Of a bell or an alarm, at every pounding Of a door or a heart, so if you can't reach them Now and they can't reach you, remember, please Remember, whatever you say, Whatever you hear or keep to yourself, whatever You scream or whisper, will need to make Some kind of sense, perhaps for days and days.

Still sits the school-house by the road, A ragged beggar sleeping; Around it still the sumachs grow, And blackberry-vines are creeping. Within, the master’s desk is seen, Deep scarred by raps official; The warping floor, the battered seats, The jack-knife’s carved initial; The charcoal frescos on its wall; Its door’s worn sill, betraying The feet that, creeping slow to school, Went storming out to playing! Long years ago a winter sun Shone over it at setting; Lit up its western window-panes, And low eaves’ icy fretting. It touched the tangled golden curls, And brown eyes full of grieving, Of one who still her steps delayed When all the school were leaving. For near her stood the little boy Her childish favor singled: His cap pulled low upon a face Where pride and shame were mingled. Pushing with restless feet the snow To right and left, he lingered;— As restlessly her tiny hands The blue-checked apron fingered. He saw her lift her eyes; he felt The soft hand’s light caressing, And heard the tremble of her voice, As if a fault confessing. “I’m sorry that I spelt the word: I hate to go above you, Because,”—the brown eyes lower fell,— “Because, you see, I love you!” Still memory to a gray-haired man That sweet child-face is showing. Dear girl! the grasses on her grave Have forty years been growing! He lives to learn, in life’s hard school, How few who pass above him Lament their triumph and his loss, Like her,—because they love him.

What was it he felt humming beneath his skin? Gaze of a twelve-year-old feasting. The hair on those arms.

Tagus, farewell! that westward with thy streams Turns up the grains of gold already tried With spur and sail, for I go seek the Thames Gainward the sun that shewth her wealthy pride, And to the town which Brutus sought by dreams, Like bended moon doth lend her lusty side. My king, my country, alone for whome I live, Of mighty love the wings for this me give.

He didn’t know, King Kleomenis, he didn’t dare— he just didn’t know how to tell his mother a thing like that: Ptolemy’s demand, to guarantee their treaty, that she too go to Egypt and be held there as a hostage— a very humiliating, indecorous thing. And he would be about to speak yet always hesitate, would start to tell her yet always stop. But the magnificent woman understood him (she’d already heard some rumors about it) and she encouraged him to get it out. And she laughed, saying of course she’d go, happy even that in her old age she could be useful to Sparta still. As for the humiliation—that didn’t touch her at all. Of course an upstart like the Lagid couldn’t possibly comprehend the Spartan spirit; so his demand couldn’t in fact humiliate a Royal Lady like herself: mother of a Spartan king.

I'm out with the wheelbarrow mixing mulch. A mockingbird trills in the pine. Then, from higher, a buzz, and through patches of blue as the fog burns off, a small plane pulls a banner, red letters I can't read— but I do see, over the fence, a man in a sky-blue shirt walking his dog to the beach. He says he missed it, will keep an eye out. Four barrows of mulch around the blueberry bushes, I'm pulling off gloves, and he's back, beaming. "It says, I LOVE YOU, MARTHA. Are you Martha?"