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Oil on limbs, maybe a rancid smell as on the chapel’s oil-press here, as on the rough pores of the unturning stone. Oil on hair wreathed in rope and maybe other scents unknown to us poor and rich and statuettes offering small breasts with their fingers. Oil in the sun the leaves shuddered when the stranger stopped and the silence weighed between the knees. The coins fell: ‘In the goddess’s name I summon you...’ Oil on the shoulders and the flexing waist legs grass-dappled, and that wound in the sun as the bell rang for vespers as I spoke in the churchyard with a crippled man.

They have shown her facing, from a range of barley at times and from the patio. She wrings a sprig of mint in a walled garden; behold, the dimple that none reckoned on, careless burdens of plums, of parsley. I thank those gentlemen: many an old master is needed if there shall be love. I thank Velasquez more: for a woman turned away may be imposed without disparagement in a prospect of grandeur. Where this high cliff joins the deep sunlight I see you beside me spread aside in the buoyant deer-moss; I sit cross-legged nibbling juniper berries and I call you my Louella now, now Ella Lou. Far down from one rim is the bay with flocks of teal, and we might look down shafts of cedar the other way; I feel a privileged one who waits, remembering the special pleasure of youth is of self-denial. Since Velasquez and the masters have hexed my eyes I see you now even in this northern grandeur; following the hip I watch the flank’s retirement and watch the nape declining from the crescent shoulder. But where your shoulder ripples back to fill the arm is a slight plump area, probably nameless: in all but rarest postures that form vanishes into wherever you withdraw inopportune breaths. You might not wonder it is there I, stretching forward, beseeching you be motionless, hold the wide kiss; I wonder mightily for my part for what purpose have I stretched a thousand miles between the two of us.

He lowered his head and darted through the grass, flushing a hen from off her nest, then zeroing in on the day-old chicks instead of the mother whose decoy trick had failed to lure him away. In the time it took for me to notice this, he'd broken the necks of two of the chicks and torn the skin from off their backs and heads. The taste of their blood had deafened him to my commands, so I went to him like an angry god and chased him away with my staff and rod, inflicting a wound also in his side for him to go on licking, to wash their blood from off his tongue with his own blood, and then I kneeled in the grass to regard his kill while the mother keened inside the woods not far away. Oh, what a mess they were with their heads snapped back and wings unhinged. I picked up the bodies like bloody socks and prayed to the god in charge of this field for my own weakness to feel this much for slaughtered chicks. For an understanding of his need to kill the most vulnerable thing, whether hungry or not.

In the green morning, before Love was destiny, The sun was king, And God was famous. The merry, the musical, The jolly, the magical, The feast, the feast of feasts, the festival Suddenly ended As the sky descended But there was only the feeling, In all the dark falling, Of fragrance and of freshness, of birth and beginning.

Sorrento, at night the long fingers of your orange lights Prick me in the sizzling streets, where the pinnacles Of other people ring tinny and papier-mâché. Is this the way Up to the murderous cliff? It’s most important that I get there And leave no witness. Ah, is this the majolica medallion Which marks the grave of girl abducted by a stallion Whom she gave a lump of maple sugar? For that was in an autumn, The time of year when young girls get hopeless and feel like Giving it all away, the way a matronly merchant Might brush off her lap, at the iron end of the market day: It’s over, it’s worthless, without deserving and without Purpose have I nourished this hope in my small patch of earth, A sickly weed whose nodding sun’s gone nova.

Where do slackers go to get their jollies? Where do they spend hours every day? Where commit their most moronic follies? In the Grünewald Café. The dull-eyed types who sit alone? They're boozers Who dose their coffee with Grand Marnier. No one ever tells them they are losers In the Grünewald Café. You hadn't seen the mobster's girlfriend. Tasty, But are you sure her goon has gone away? It's not so wise to come on overhasty In the Grünewald Café. You sidle up and say, "Can I get you a drink?" She's shuffling cards and seems to want to play. A smile means "Try your luck, guy," don't you think, In the Grünewald Café? Card game done, why not get down to cases? Up close her blue-green eyes seem less blasé. All around you fools are pulling faces— In the Grünewald Café? Yet when your hands touch, someone taps your shoulder. It's the waiter: "Sorry. Care to pay?" A silence falls. Things suddenly feel colder In the Grünewald Café. The red-faced gangster, packing heat, approaches. A rod's blunt business end. You start to pray. What made you hang out here with all these roaches In the Grünewald Café? How brief it is, that fiery burst of thunder! Brief as life, brief as a winter day. To croak because you made a stupid blunder In the Grünewald Café! And now this floating view down from the ceiling: Blood soaks the spot where your dead body lay. What song, what words express all that you're feeling? In the Grünewald Café.

Some days I am happy to be no one The shifting grasses In the May winds are miraculous enough As they ripple through the meadow of lupine The field as iridescent as a Renaissance heaven & do you see that boy with his arms raised Like one of Raphael’s angels held within This hush & this pause & the sky’s lapis expanse? That boy is my son & I am his only father Even when I am no one

CHORUS Come we shepherds whose blest sight Hath met love’s noon in nature’s night; Come lift we up our loftier song And wake the sun that lies too long. To all our world of well-stol’n joy He slept, and dreamt of no such thing, While we found out heav’n’s fairer eye, And kiss’d the cradle of our King. Tell him he rises now too late To show us aught worth looking at. Tell him we now can show him more Than he e’er show’d to mortal sight, Than he himself e’er saw before, Which to be seen needs not his light. Tell him, Tityrus, where th’ hast been; Tell him, Thyrsis, what th’ hast seen. TITYRUS Gloomy night embrac’d the place Where the Noble Infant lay; The Babe look’d up and show’d his face, In spite of darkness, it was day. It was thy day, Sweet! and did rise Not from the east, but from thine eyes. CHORUS It was thy day, Sweet! and did rise Not from the east, but from thine eyes. THYRSIS Winter chid aloud, and sent The angry North to wage his wars; The North forgot his fierce intent, And left perfumes instead of scars. By those sweet eyes’ persuasive pow’rs, Where he meant frost, he scatter’d flow’rs. CHORUS By those sweet eyes’ persuasive pow’rs, Where he meant frost, he scatter’d flow’rs. BOTH We saw thee in thy balmy nest, Young dawn of our eternal day! We saw thine eyes break from their east And chase the trembling shades away. We saw thee, and we bless’d the sight, We saw thee by thine own sweet light. TITYRUS Poor World, said I, what wilt thou do To entertain this starry stranger? Is this the best thou canst bestow, A cold, and not too cleanly, manger? Contend, ye powers of heav’n and earth, To fit a bed for this huge birth. CHORUS Contend, ye powers of heav’n and earth, To fit a bed for this huge birth. THYRSIS Proud World, said I, cease your contest, And let the Mighty Babe alone; The phoenix builds the phoenix’ nest, Love’s architecture is his own; The Babe whose birth embraves this morn, Made his own bed ere he was born. CHORUS The Babe whose birth embraves this morn, Made his own bed ere he was born. TITYRUS I saw the curl’d drops, soft and slow, Come hovering o’er the place’s head, Off’ring their whitest sheets of snow To furnish the fair Infant’s bed. Forbear, said I, be not too bold; Your fleece is white, but ’tis too cold. CHORUS Forbear, said I, be not too bold; Your fleece is white, but ’tis too cold. THYRSIS I saw the obsequious Seraphims Their rosy fleece of fire bestow; For well they now can spare their wings, Since Heav’n itself lies here below. Well done, said I, but are you sure Your down so warm will pass for pure? CHORUS Well done, said I, but are you sure Your down so warm will pass for pure? TITYRUS No no, your King’s not yet to seek Where to repose his royal head; See see, how soon his new-bloom’d cheek ’Twixt’s mother’s breasts is gone to bed. Sweet choice, said we! no way but so, Not to lie cold, yet sleep in snow. CHORUS Sweet choice, said we! no way but so, Not to lie cold, yet sleep in snow. BOTH We saw thee in thy balmy nest, Bright dawn of our eternal day! We saw thine eyes break from their east, And chase the trembling shades away. We saw thee, and we bless’d the sight, We saw thee, by thine own sweet light. CHORUS We saw thee, and we bless’d the sight, We saw thee, by thine own sweet light. FULL CHORUS Welcome, all wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span; Summer in winter; day in night; Heaven in earth, and God in man. Great little one, whose all-embracing birth Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth. Welcome; though nor to gold nor silk, To more than Caesar’s birthright is; Two sister seas of virgin-milk, With many a rarely temper’d kiss, That breathes at once both maid and mother, Warms in the one, cools in the other. Welcome, though not to those gay flies Gilded i’ th’ beams of earthly kings, Slippery souls in smiling eyes; But to poor shepherds, homespun things, Whose wealth’s their flock, whose wit, to be Well read in their simplicity. Yet when young April’s husband-show’rs Shall bless the fruitful Maia’s bed, We’ll bring the first-born of her flow’rs To kiss thy feet and crown thy head. To thee, dread Lamb! whose love must keep The shepherds more than they the sheep. To thee, meek Majesty! soft King Of simple graces and sweet loves, Each of us his lamb will bring, Each his pair of silver doves; Till burnt at last in fire of thy fair eyes, Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.

My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend. But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday. My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend. Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable pigeons. No one had the tie & our solution to it was to buy shinier watches. We were enamored with what our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital & I didn’t want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale, bad plot, great wifi in the atypical café. My mother was in the hospital & she didn’’t want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn’t trust my father to be it.You always forget something, she said,even when I do the list for you. Even then.

All things fall away: store fronts on the west, ANGEL’S DELICATESSEN, windows boarded and laced in day-glow, BLUE KNIGHT AUTO REPAIR to the north with its verandah of rusted mufflers and hubcaps of extinct Studebakers. The diminishing neighborhood sprawls under dusty folds of sycamore and fading elm, the high birdhouse out back starling-haunted. Inside the cottage a bay window translates the language of sunlight, flaring like baroque trumpets on the red carpet, shadow-dappled as the house turns slowly beneath the drift of tree branch and sun. We have come to shroud the couch in plastic, spread sheets over the fat reading chair and the piano’s mahogany gloom, the impossible etude’s blur of black notes. Among a turmoil of ungraded papers lies the Loeb Classics Aeneid open to the last lesson. Later in the bedroom we imagine a flourish of light, her husband loosening the sash of her white silk robe, his beard brushing the back of her neck. Amores, the art of love, of words lifting like vapors on a cold day, the dense vowels of Ovid and Virgil almost vanished, almost risen to music. We lock the heavy door and walk away from the silence, the lone hexameters of Dido pulsing in an empty house.