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He came back and shot. He shot him. When he came back, he shot, and he fell, stumbling, past the shadow wood, down, shot, dying, dead, to full halt. At the bottom, bleeding, shot dead. He died then, there after the fall, the speeding bullet, tore his face and blood sprayed fine over the killer and the grey light. Pictures of the dead man, are everywhere. And his spirit sucks up the light. But he died in darkness darker than his soul and everything tumbled blindly with him dying down the stairs. We have no word on the killer, except he came back, from somewhere to do what he did. And shot only once into his victim's stare, and left him quickly when the blood ran out. We know the killer was skillful, quick, and silent, and that the victim probably knew him. Other than that, aside from the caked sourness of the dead man's expression, and the cool surprise in the fixture of his hands and fingers, we know nothing.

for Louis Asekoff Mid-October, Massachusetts. We drive through the livid innards of a beast—dragon or salamander—whose home is fire. The hills a witch’s quilt of goldrust, flushed cinnamon, wine fever, hectic lemon. After dark, while water ruffles, salted, in a big pot, we four gather towards the woodfire, exchanging lazy sentences, waiting dinner. Sunk in the supermarket cardboard box, the four lobsters tip and coolly stroke each other with rockblue baton legs and tentative antennae, their breath a wet clicking, the undulant slow shift of their plated bodies like the doped drift of patients in the padded ward. Eyes like squished berries out on stalks. It’s the end of the line for them, yet faintly in that close-companioned air they smell the sea, a shadow-haunted hole to hide in till all this blows over. When it’s time, we turn the music up to nerve us to it, then take them one by one and drop in the salty roil and scald, then clamp the big lid back. Grasping the shapely fantail, I plunge mine in headfirst and feel before I can detach myself the flat slap of a jackknifed back, glimpse for an instant before I put the lid on it the rigid backward bow-bend of the whole body as the brain explodes and lidless eyes sear white. We two are bound in silence till the pot-lid planks back and music floods again, like a tide. Minutes later, the four of us bend to brittle pink intricate shells, drawing white sweet flesh with our fingers, sewing our shroud-talk tight about us. Later, near moonless midnight, when I scrape the leafbright broken remains into the garbage can outside, that last knowing spasm eels up my arm again and off, like a flash, across the rueful stars.

We tell the story every year— how we peered from the windows, shades drawn— though nothing really happened, the charred grass now green again. We peered from the windows, shades drawn, at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree, the charred grass still green. Then we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps. At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree, a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns. We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps, the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil. It seemed the angels had gathered, white men in their gowns. When they were done, they left quietly. No one came. The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil; by morning the flames had all dimmed. When they were done, the men left quietly. No one came. Nothing really happened. By morning all the flames had dimmed. We tell the story every year.

Seven o’clock, the time set in his mind Like herbs displayed in aspic, as the chimes Were striking. Then the squeaking of his shoes’ Black leather tread, pacing those measures down The first-floor hall, where sunset’s apricot Was oozing nectar through the open doors. Her voice, conspiratorial and astonished, Called him across the bedroom’s drowning cube Towards the window. How well Miss Waterson Remembers it: “Please come and look at this, Mr Devine;” the clock on the mantelpiece Rehearsing for the hour of seven. She pointed Down. There, a moving picture on the lawn, His father, like a patient whose long months Of immobility meant learning afresh The art of walking, climbing the light’s green slope Towards the summer house, looking intently As though for a cuff link or a signature. That evening he still thinks of, lying now, No longer needing lessons for his legs, How he cast back his glance and saw the windows Blazing like cats’ eyes on his uselessness, And in that golden mirror, two gold figures Recording him, two shadows of dark gold— Miss Waterson (was it?) and another one— And then took out his watch on which the hands Were so meticulously assembling seven. Young Emily, appointed just the week Before, came rushing to the stairs—she’d seen Him stumble—to advise Mr Devine About his father’s fall. And so, almost Immobilized herself in that clinging syrup, She observed the hall clock’s quaint rendition of Seven, the time set clearly in his mind Like summer herbs in aspic, as the chimes Were striking. Then the squeaking of his shoes’ Black leather tread, pacing those measures down The corridor, where sunset’s apricot Was oozing nectar through the open doors. Her voice, companionable but astonished, Floated across the bedroom’s drowning cube As he descended. How well Miss Waterson Remembers it: “Please come and look at this;” And Emily, who had just been taken on That week, came rushing to the window. She pointed Down, smartly on the stroke of seven. There, A moving picture on the lawn, was old Mr Devine, like a patient whose long months Of immobility meant learning afresh The art of walking, climbing the light’s green slope Abstractedly towards the rose garden. That evening he still thinks of, lying now, No longer needing lessons for his legs, How he cast back his glance and saw the windows Glaring like cats’ eyes on his helplessness, And in that golden mirror, two gold figures Gesticulating, two shadows of dark gold— The new girl (was it?) and another one— And then took out his watch on which the hands Were so laboriously assembling seven. Miss Waterson, with Emily behind her In a panic, dashed to the stairs to find Mr Devine, anxious to let him know About his father’s fall. And there they saw him, Almost immobile in that clinging syrup, And heard the hall clock’s muffled tolling of Seven, the time set firmly in his mind . . .

Happy Birthday Kenneth Koch/Feb 27 We went to all those places where they restore sadness and joy and call it art. We were piloted by Auden who became Unbearably acrimonious when we dropped off Senghor into the steamy skies of his beloved West Africa. The termites and ants were waiting for him to unearth the sun in Elissa. The clouds were as cool as a dog’s nose pressed against our cheeks. I notice your eggshell skin is as creamy as a lion’s armpit as we cross the horizon on strands of Yeats’ silver hair. There is a light coffee flame in his eyes guiding us like an old Irish house cleaner holding a candle in a black and white English movie. Yeats’ lips look like an angry Rimbaud illuminating poetry with his youth and vigorous sunlight. He knew eternity would vanish the sun at dusk. He caught it with a rainbow tied to his finger. There was nothing left after that. We cross the equator heading north following Emily Dickinson’s black bag containing stems of her longer poems preserved in darkness and memory like wild pearls thrown overboard to avoid capture by Spanish pirates. The islands below float by like water hearts in a child’s aquarium. We are candy wrappers being blown across the waxed floors of poetry. We land on the Brooklyn Bridge. Whitman’s past-port face is grinning at the nineteenth century in the thorny arms of Gerard Manley Hopkins whose head was set on fire by God’s little hands. The hands that circumcised the world. Gertrude Stein is a match flaring on a young woman’s pillow whose birthmarks have been stolen. We cross the green Atlantic into World War One. We are met by Rilke dressed in his Orpheus uniform wearing white sonnet gloves that once belonged to a stone angel. Rilke offers us a glass of amontillado made from Lorca’s private stock of gypsy tears. The sherry is not quite as dry as Wallace Stevens’ lush mango metaphors of familiar objects. Although Stevens’ poems are fragrant, there is a lingering afterthought of Pound on the tongue. Pound collected his misty feelings to make raindrops into European and American poetry. Vagueness became as sharp as a pencil. Our blue box is not allowed to attend Apollinaire’s birthday party held by the august Académie française

Snow and after, each bidding and restlessness turns the goat’s heart fallow: long hours of ice and bluster: asymmetry of wind. Say every goat has in its heart a field, and each field, a goat: the slumber of muscle and grass is still a different elegy. Every heart writes a different letter of winter to its cold. Icicles on sheet metal, bucket frozen in the well. Once there was no language for the weather, just The sky is low and birdless; or The sky is a box of wings.

I was listening for the dog when the locks were pried open. The man was dead. The dog, a survivor, was dead. It happens more often this way. A disease left untreated; the body, in confusion, gives in. The bomb breathes its fire down the hallway, the son comes back in pieces; the body, in confusion, gives in. The grief is a planet. A dust ring. A small moon that’s been hidden under my pillow, that’s been changing the way my body moves this whole time.

So populous the region That from the next region The crowing of children, barking of cars could be heard, So that a continuous linkage Of sounds of living ran In the limber air, District to district, Woodlake to Montclair, Freestone to Smithfield, and one child’s cry Was not concealed from any trade route, Or passer by, Or upstairs island of thought withdrawn, Or basement of submerged magnificence. One crow Welkened the evening sky, Bark blasted the dark, Like an assertion in a time of assent, Or an increase to astonishment. June 1958

The chain uncouples, and his jacket hangs on the peg over hers, and he's inside. She stalls in the kitchen, putting the kettle on, buys herself a minute looking for two matching cups for the lime-flower tea, not really lime but linden, heart-shaped leaves and sticky flowers that smell of antifreeze. She talks a wall around her, twists the string tighter around the tea bag in her spoon. But every conversation has to break somewhere, and at the far end of the sofa he sits, warming his hands around the cup he hasn't tasted yet, and listens on with such an exasperating show of patience it's almost a relief to hear him ask it: If you're not using your body right now maybe you'd let me borrow it for a while?

At the supper for street people The young man who goes about all muffled up from harm, With whatever he has found, newspaper pages Carefully folded to make a weirdly festive Hat or hood, down almost over his eyes. Everything carefully arranged to make him other. The paper-covered razor blade in his mouth, Or the bit of wood, like carrying a message. A fantasy so clever, outwitting itself, That it became what it was he was, and so He was what it was. The long loose shirt too big For him, the pantaloons too big for him Loose like the pantaloons of the circus clown, Some kind of jacket too big, he got it somewhere. His burden slept dreaming everywhere upon him. As if his whole body and the clothes he wore dreamed Of his condition and the dream came true. His clothes slept on him as if they were his lover.