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I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear ... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

I have a seat in the abandoned theater in Beirut. I might forget, and I might recall the final act without longing ... not because of anything other than that the play was not written skillfully ... Chaos as in the war days of those in despair, and an autobiography of the spectators’ impulse. The actors were tearing up their scripts and searching for the author among us, we the witnesses sitting in our seats I tell my neighbor the artist: Don’t draw your weapon, and wait, unless you’re the author! —No Then he asks me: And you are you the author? —No So we sit scared. I say: Be a neutral hero to escape from an obvious fate He says: No hero dies revered in the second scene. I will wait for the rest. Maybe I would revise one of the acts. And maybe I would mend what the iron has done to my brothers So I say: It is you then? He responds: You and I are two masked authors and two masked witnesses I say: How is this my concern? I’m a spectator He says: No spectators at chasm’s door ... and no one is neutral here. And you must choose your part in the end So I say: I’m missing the beginning, what’s the beginning?

But unfortunately it can only travel into the future at a rate of one second per second, which seems slow to the physicists and to the grant committees and even to me. But I manage to get there, time after time, to the next moment and to the next. Thing is, I can't turn it off. I keep zipping ahead— well not zipping—And if I try to get out of this time machine, open the latch, I'll fall into space, unconscious, then desiccated! And I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of that. So I stay inside. There's a window, though. It shows the past. It's like a television or fish tank. But it's never live; it's always over. The fish swim in backward circles. Sometimes it's like a rearview mirror, another chance to see what I'm leaving behind, and sometimes like blackout, all that time wasted sleeping. Myself age eight, whole head burnt with embarrassment at having lost a library book. Myself lurking in a candled corner expecting to be found charming. Me holding a rose though I want to put it down so I can smoke. Me exploding at my mother who explodes at me because the explosion of some dark star all the way back struck hard at mother's mother's mother. I turn away from the window, anticipating a blow. I thought I'd find myself an old woman by now, traveling so light in time. But I haven't gotten far at all. Strange not to be able to pick up the pace as I'd like; the past is so horribly fast.

I have a yong suster Fer beyonden the se, Many be the drowryes That she sente me. She sente me the cherye Withouten ony ston; And so she dede the dove Withouten ony bon. She sente me the brer Withouten ony rinde; She bad me love my lemman Withoute longing. How shuld ony cherye Be withoute ston? And how shuld ony dove Be withoute bon? How shuld ony brer Been withoute rinde? How shuld I love myn lemman Withoute longing? Whan the cherye was a flowr Than hadde it non ston. When the dove was an ey Than hadde it non bon. When the brer was onbred Than hadde it non rind. Whan the maiden hath that she loveth She is without longing.

I have become wealthy in a foreign land gravity makes me sick in my slippery throat the devil makes me lousy with summer like I'm buried in the sun in its sounds with my mother there's something about having a heart beat like traffic like wind I did it afterall: I had a sweaty body in Berlin it was all right I'm taking some time out from being alive with daughters It's OK I'm impersonating a kiss of lilacs a murder of crows are settling over my corpse the dust covers my photographs I only ever write about childhood because that was before I died and now the devil has brought me back to Berlin in summer in Stockholm I'm starting to make sense of my body which is becoming buried in pop music and now ooh-ooh I have to rebuild the wall an erotics based on occupation I write you a letter ett brev about my body as if it were split between foreign words whispered by stringy angels and soldiers who march in through the eye of a needle I write my body with the eye of a needle with nålen I write when I'm sick with gravity in summer in summer I'm sick in light summer light musical light from hell and you dare call it heaven my body you dare to call it heaven

I have never needed God as a personal savior in my practical life syllogisms about His existence were never music to my ears but always seemed vague missing a dimension although I didn’t know how to say this. Neither a philosophical God nor a biblical God suddenly appears among His creations amid revelations of wisdom in Jerusalem, His city. And certainly not in disclosures of pious inner principles and also not among poets, unfortunately. Astronomical bodies at night and mystical landscapes in Sharafat for example and Beit Jala bear His between-the-lines existence, His inklings. The expression of an ultra-Orthodox man’s eyes in Mea She’arim — this too — and even the purifying surrender of a sly and seasoned merchant, irreligious now in Geula, when you reproach him. Something like “Reprove a wise man and he will love you.” And you, when you cleanse yourself of anxious constraints about your environment after taking hash or grass. Springs of purity whose origins you’re unaware of bubble in coursing blood, in glands, in milk and some paradisiacal primeval revelation, and your almost subconscious innerness your being suddenly revealed — Is this clear enough to you, heredity? Genes? Or existential uniqueness, a maintained infancy that knocks you out with a sense of a refreshing genesis. Everything becomes clear in a great light. You shed revulsion and resistance, a great love germinates within you — this gloriousness this wonder comprised of absolutes of — objective truth, complete justice, decency honor internalized honesty and complex wisdom enhanced down to the last detail. Ho, complete, divine purity. Suddenly you polish a syllogism of your own for decisive proof of His existence: God is an idea — ideas don’t have material existence but they exist nonetheless so God exists definitively as the spirit of an idea, the biblical assertion “He has no body and no bodily form” is clear to me now as an exegesis that sits well with philosophy. Translated from the Hebrew

Though half my years besiege the aged sun, I have not lived. My robust preparation Lags tardily behind fit consummation, Droops sweatily in courses just begun. Oh, I have loved and lusted with the best, Plucked momentary music from the senses; I’ve kissed a lip or two with fair pretenses And wept for softness of a woman’s breast. My mind rebounds to nether joys and pain, Toying with filth and pharisaic leaven; I know the lift up sundry peaks to heaven, And every rockless path to hell again. I wait the hour when gods have more to give Than husks and bare insatiate will to live.

It’s no wonder          I’m always tired          with all these tract houses— It’s night & cold on my belly in                                                  the undeveloped field now I have to bury her clothing inside                                                a black garbage bag in plot D police cars roll         past but continue        down the treeless parkway even after shining their lights on                                                  me in my freshman sundress I can only assume they don’t see                                                  the significance of my presence but I must say          1994 is a simpler         time—not everyone is suspect I crawl up next to my old house                                                   & look through a lit window my mother reads a book in bed            I want to knock           on the glass, there’s something I need to tell her

I have to tell you, there are times when the sun strikes me like a gong, and I remember everything, even your ears.

On the way home, Klansmen handed out pamphlets on the corner. At the convenience store, taxidermied alligator heads framed red red lips, black black skin, white wild white wide eyes, and teeth grinning (gritting). Mammy, Sambo, savages and jockeys shaped cookie jars, figurines, gravy boats, piggy banks, and salt and pepper shakers. I hold evidence in the shape of entrails, two scales stuck to the side of the sink. Bodies decapitated and soaked in milk and butter. Breaded in crumbs. Tender, the results of freeing the little ones. Mount that big one there. I have lived with the reduction of noise and the number of warnings. I have lived under July’s blankets and February’s ill-fitting sleeves. I have lived with the proof of the Susquehanna’s existence, in the shadow of the shadow of the outline of a bubble’s refracted edge.