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After Stevens By now the snow is easing the live nerves of the wire fence and the firs, softening the distances it falls through, laying down a rightness, as in the spackled whites, the woodgrains of a room’s hush before music, before a lush legato in whose unctions the excruciations ease, as in the first thick arrhythmics from the hardwoods of the late quartets, whose dense snow of emotion, downdrifting, formal, whose violins and cellos, desiring the exhilarations of changes, turn loose an infusion of wintry music, all sideslip and immense descent, repetitions, evolutions salving down into the still air, the wound, the listening.

At four o’clock it’s dark. Today, looking out through dusk at three gray women in stretch slacks chatting in front of the post office, their steps left and right and back like some quick folk dance of kindness, I remembered the winter we spent crying in each other’s laps. What could you be thinking at this moment? How lovely and strange the gangly spines of trees against a thickening sky as you drive from the library humming off-key? Or are you smiling at an idea met in a book the way you smiled with your whole body the first night we talked? I was so sure my love of you was perfect, and the light today reminded me of the winter you drove home each day in the dark at four o’clock and would come into my study to kiss me despite mistake after mistake after mistake.

Not yet summer, but unseasonable heat pries open the cherry tree. It stands there stupefied, in its sham, pink frills, dense with early blooming. Then, as afternoon cools into more furtive winds, I look up to see a blizzard of petals rushing the sky. It is only April. I can’t stop my own life from hurrying by. The moon, already pacing.

Eyes that spurn yet invite Like spikes in the sunlight Of Manhattan’s high-rise— Babylon’s ladies outshine Daughters of Jerusalem, Zion is no easy climb

The land was there before us Was the land. Then things Began happening fast. Because The bombs us have always work Sometimes it makes me think God must be one of us. Because Us has saved the world. Us gave it A particular set of regulations Based on 1) undisputable acumen. 2) carnivorous fortunes, delicately Referred to here as “bull market” And (of course) other irrational factors Deadly smoke thick over the icecaps, Our man in Saigon   Lima   Tokyo   etc   etc

A girl stalked a sheep in a field. The sheep began to bleed & the whole field smelled like carnage. A butcher had moved in and slaughtered the sheep. Red, the stain on her dress. Empty, her basket. The depletion of resources winter sowed — the house on the hill in disrepair. In the vacated house, the girl tried to flush the blood down the toilet but the infrastructure couldn’t completely erase the evidence of life. The girl studied Islamic history, the origin of arithmetic. The stain turned the girl into a lady in her country’s blighted first-world landscape. History’s pages were open, one by one they ripped. When she asked the spout for water, it rusted. She grew cold. She grew weary. She grew sad. If only she could ban the butcher in solidarity with the bad children, the refugees and outcasts. Instead she drove into the city, the urban sprawl swallowing her. She went into a store, got caught stealing a candy bar. Surveillance footage showed she had no remorse. She justified:We all live on stolen land. Why not one bar of chocolate, subsidized?

Even before I saw the chambered nautilus I wanted to sail not in the us navy Tonight I'm waiting for you, your letter At the same time his letter, the view of you By him and then by me in the park, no rhymes I saw you, this is in prose, no it's not Sitting with the molluscs & anemones in an Empty autumn enterprise baby you look pretty With your long eventual hair, is love king? What's this? A sonnet? Love's a babe we know that I'm coming up, I'm coming, Shakespeare only stuck To one subject but I'll mention nobody said You have to get young Americans some ice cream In the artificial light in which she woke

Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It establishes the universal ideas in language, And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice With capital letters, lie and oppression with small. It puts what should be above things as they are, Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope. It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master, Giving us the estate of the world to manage. It saves austere and transparent phrases From the filthy discord of tortured words. It says that everything is new under the sun, Opens the congealed fist of the past. Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia And poetry, her ally in the service of the good. As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth, The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo. Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit. Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction. Berkeley, 1968

Veiled in velvet, is she here? Leave off, leave off: You shall not enter, you shall not emerge. It is neither yours nor your share. Return...Return: The sea is swelling; its waves are calling. I hold to the holy portion— I am held in the holiness of the King.

Deep in the soul there throbs the secret pain Of one homesick for dear familiar things, When Spring winds rock the waves of sunlit rain And on the grass there falls the shadow of wings. How should one bend one’s dreams to the dark clay Where carven beauty mixed with madness dwells? And men who fear to die fear not to slay, And Life has built herself ten thousand hells. No wave that breaks in music on the shore Can purify the tiger’s bloodstained den, The worms that crawl about the dark world’s core Cry out aloud against the deeds of men. Alas, the peace of these still hours and deep Is but a dream that wanders from afar, And the great Dreamer, turning in His sleep, Smothers in darkness all our little star. Yet in the gentle spirit of the wise Light flashes out through many a simple thing, The tired ploughman, with impassive eyes, Knows in his heart that he was once a king. He sees in dreams the crown long lost and dear, That glittered on a fallen spirit’s brow, A shattered gleam from some far shining sphere Has dazed the eyes of him who drives the plough. The long brown furrows of the broken soil Lead in straight lines unto the sunset's gates; On high green hills, beyond the reach of toil, The vision of the twilight broods and waits. The silence folded in about the heart Whispers strange longings to the broken soul, That lingers in a lonely place apart, Stretching vain hands to clasp the secret whole.