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Each morning, downward, Maria Stella Maris Church glows out the passenger-side window. Further, the corner where the Salvation Army stood and Hart Crane spent the night. At a shore-edge bar, where they'd finally met up, they shared bottles, walked out toward being together, a hotel, and then got rolled. Crane spent the night in the shelter. E., bruised, shipped out the next morning. The hungover poet took the train back toward Altadena. From my car, not much has changed; I see young stevedores shrug off last night's drunk. Past New Dock Street, a cigarette splits, balloons into orange under my wheels. Hot ash. My unkindness is thrown over and over. Door to door, a ride is for what I've squirreled away, not riches but a pile: the ways no thing mattered, how a kiss didn't count, how a friendship could be severed by a coyote walking between us or a dream. My windshield is a tracery. Long ago, down Gaffey, we raced in my hairdresser's sports car. She drove with her knees. Her perfume, the want, filled the heated car. We drove once to her husband's parking lot, switched cars—he'd shipped out for days—and toured in his jeep. But in this home I've chosen, there's a church on every corner and mourners in between. Boys pair up and nothing happens. Girls hold hands. We get rolled. They ship out. Liquor is drained. The train returns to Altadena. Mary, star of the sea, watches over the gem of a filthy port like the hawk, diamond-shaped ahead. She lets me pass five days a week. On my way uphill there are ovals of golden light, then no one home. Shoeless child, chimes, and stevedore off work. Burnt lawn. Hellhole. Haven. Next stop, my house.

And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place . . . T. S. Eliot The wind cooled as it crossed the open pond and drove little waves toward us, brisk, purposeful waves that vanished at our feet, such energy thwarted by so little elevation. The wind was endless, seamless, old as the earth. Insects came to regard us with favor. I felt them alight, felt their minute footfalls. I was a challenge, an Everest . . . And you, whom I have heard breathe all night, sigh through the water of sleep with vestigial gills . . . A pair of dragonflies drifted past us, silent, while higher up two bullet-shaped jets dragged their roars behind them on unbreakable chains. It seemed a pity we’d given up the sky to them, but I understand so little. Perhaps it was necessary. All our years together— and not just together. Surely by now we have the same blood type, the same myopia. Sometimes I think we’re the same sex, the one in the middle of man and woman, born of both as every child is. The waves came to us, one each heartbeat, and lay themselves at our feet. The swelling goes down. The fever cools. There, where the Hartleys grew lettuce eighty years ago bear and beaver, fox and partridge den and nest and hunt and are hunted. I wish I had the means to give all the north back to itself, to let the pines rise in the hayfield and the lilacs go wild. But then where would we live? I wanted that hour with you all winter— I thought of it while I worked, before I slept and when I woke, a time when the tangled would straighten, when contrition would become benediction: the positive hour, shining like mica. At last the wind brought it to us across the pond, then took it up again, every last minute.

It is the hour of lamps. On our knees my mother and I, still young, color with crayons threadbare nap on the living room rug. Though there is no money, no one seems to care. We are self-possessed as bugs waving their antennae through cracks in the kitchen's linoleum floor. When Father begins to read from the red gilt volume in his lap, a circle of light encapsulates us like hearts in a womb. Except their marriage is already dead. I know this though I'm only six. So we visit pharaohs, a boatman on the Nile, Crusaders eating grapes on a beach. Life escapes with all its sadness while two tragic Greek poets inhabit Father's voice. Who'd know I am just a boy when he begins a stoic moral tale concerning a dull provincial doctor's young French wife? If Mother, in French, begins to sing to herself, I know she's had enough. Crayon stubs litter the crumbling rug. Our prostrate cat sneezes at the dust in her fur. And cries from a swallow remind us one swallow doesn't make a summer.

The last days of the summer: bright and clear Shines the warm sun down on the quiet land, Where corn-fields, thick and heavy in the ear, Are slowly ripening for the laborer’s hand; Seed-time and harvest — since the bow was set, Not vainly has man hoped your coming yet! To the quick rush of sickles, joyously The reapers in the yellow wheat-fields sung, And bound the pale sheaves of the ripened rye, When the first tassels of the maize were hung; That precious seed into the furrow cast Earliest in spring-time, crowns the harvest last. Ever, when summer’s sun burns faint and dim, And rare and few the pleasant days are given, When the sweet praise of our thankgiving hymn Makes beautiful music in the ear of Heaven, I think of other harvests whence the sound Of singing comes not as the sheaves are bound. Not where the rice-fields whiten in the sun, And the warm South casts down her yellow fruit, Shout they the labors of the autumn done — For there Oppression casts her deadly root, And they, who sow and gather in that clime Share not the treasures of the harvest-time. God of the seasons! thou who didst ordain Bread for the eater who shall plant the soil, How have they heard thee, who have forged the chain And built the dungeon for the sons of toil? Burdening their hearts, not with the voice of prayer, But the dull cries of almost dumb despair. They who would see that growth of wickedness Planted where now the peaceful prairie waves, And make the green paths of our wilderness Red with the torn and bleeding feet of slaves — Forbid it, Heaven! and let the sharp axe be Laid at the root of that most poison tree! Let us behold its deadly leaves begin A fainter shadow o’er the world to cast, And the long day that nursed its growth of sin Wane to a sunset that shall be its last; So that the day-star, rising from the sea, Shall light a land whose children will be free!

(Civil War Photography by T. O’Sullivan, 1866) Raisin-black blood dries on their faces. Thick wool clothes. Lumps of bloated bodies lying on their backs. Mouths open. Chins pointing to the sky. As though blown over backward. Or turned. Fingers swollen. Boots and rifles missing. Coats and jackets pulled up exposing gray shirts, bloody underwear. The sky drifts toward sap green. No fences. No stone walls.

I am a reaper whose muscles set at sun-down. All my oats are cradled. But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger. My eyes are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time. I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack’d fields of other harvesters. It would be good to see them . . . crook’d, split, and iron-ring’d handles of the scythes . . . It would be good to see them, dust-caked and blind. I hunger. (Dusk is a strange fear’d sheath their blades are dull’d in.) My throat is dry. And should I call, a cracked grain like the oats . . . eoho— I fear to call. What should they hear me, and offer me their grain, oats, or wheat or corn? I have been in the fields all day. I fear I could not taste it. I fear knowledge of my hunger. My ears are caked with dust of oat-fields at harvest-time. I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry. It would be good to hear their songs . . . reapers of the sweet-stalked cane, cutters of the corn . . . even though their throats cracked, and the strangeness of their voices deafened me. I hunger. My throat is dry. Now that the sun has set and I am chilled. I fear to call. (Eoho, my brothers!) I am a reaper. (Eoho!) All my oats are cradled. But I am too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain. It has no taste to it. My throat is dry . . . O my brothers, I beat my palms, still soft, against the stubble of my harvesting. (You beat your soft palms, too.) My pain is sweet. Sweeter than the oats or wheat or corn. It will not bring me knowledge of my hunger.

The hastily assembled angel wanders And has      through cities centuries of  cities And countries and millennia of  cities And countries and of  women and of men      there’s No hurry now though he was hurriedly Once brought to being      and bears the scars of  that Though slowly      in the Earth      though slowly he Eventually began to wonder what The hurry had been for      and if  he could Have been a better angel or have done Better the job he did if once They’d made him the      other angels had allowed Him to meet God      for he has been uncertain As people are uncertain he has nev- er been as certain      as dogs are      who sniff The wind that moves the curtain      and see behind the curtain

Except most things weren’t clouds      everything there Was clouds      the hastily assembled angel Before he knew the word clouds was the last word He heard the other angels shouting as They shoved him      though he after he had fallen Too far to hear them he      saw their mouths mak- ing shapes that were not clouds and when he saw that Thought That’ssomething that isn’t clouds thatshouting After I’ve fallen too far to hear them don’t They knowI’ve fallen too far to hear them now Or are we not together now before He knew the word      in those few minutes the oth- er angels were assembling him      he named The things he saw with words that seemed to fit them Nothing was heavenly a few things were Ocean and hole and monkeyapple he Before the other angels shoved him      had Started combining words      but nobody Would name the things he saw the way he named them And to the other angels all his naming Was noise they shouted      as they shoved him It’s All clouds what difference could it make      to the angel Built to monitor the Earth      from the surface Of  the Earth      what was or wasn’t true in Heaven They shoved him then      they stared and then they shouted After the disappearing figure all The things they suddenly remembered      they had Forgotten to tell him      as they were hammer- ing him together as they hammered him Together and behind them      but above Behind      a pinkish light that was or was- n’t God pulsed      like the heart of  one of  the creatures God hadn’t yet created though the angels Had seen the creatures coming in the waves Then covering the Earth      the angels had Seen them      and didn’t want to be assigned To live with them      and so had voted to Build their own angel but they didn’t ask Permission first instead they built him quick- ly      and as Gabriel asked God      if  this New angel could be sent instead to Earth Fresh      eyes for a fresh world the other angels Shoved him the hastily assembled angel From the cloud and Heaven      he      the hastily Assembled angel could see      farther than The other angels though he couldn’t under- stand what he saw as well      as the other angels Might have      and as he fell he saw their mouths mak- ing shapes he saw the light behind them      pulsing And as he fell he watched the clouds becoming Abstract      as any other angel would From Heaven watch a species go extinct Even as dry land emerged from the waves below him

to wake to winter     in the coming out of the time of year when they release the masterpieces, but to be still in the other night. some drown in movies. some prefer the unfinished ungovernable recital, a mystical ecology where one dies in a camp, or rolls out with the dice on the sidewalk among boys with cardboard shields and plays dead in white crinoline. what if paradise was only lifting the veil to flirt. no one perfect, but perfection inserts us so, Pascal thinks a God in his pocket. what if paradise meant walking on the ground of our self estrangement, and the veil of our gaze an unsteady balm was not what we saw through but were,   twisting, untwisting— do you believe.            we were never strictly servants.

Muscular as a stallion in fact — but I have no horse in this race of people against people. It was made certain I wouldn’t, that I’d inherit nothing except a whipping of my hindquarters as a form of correction, in the cadence of I love you, tar baby, I love you. This is not unlike how my parents were raised, to comply, and their parents before them, and theirs before them and so forth as far back as anyone cared to speak of what they lived through, the preposterous preposition of it all. Therefore and thereafter, whenever I hear the word pedigree, I think of the blank check I don’t have behind my name, and then I think of saddles and stirrups, and then the soreness of my lower back, and then the source of that. How a boss can ride you: of this I am personally familiar, plus know by blood drawn from two lines of family men forced to cut out their own tongues to keep food on the table they could no longer taste or even stand to. Their tongues grew back, yes, after some time and with sharpness I’m told, needing to cut against something, anything, to be purposeful given their new forms. Woe! Woe! Woe! How a man rides his wife, his children, how he’d ride a horse he’ll never have, could never give them unless said horse is immaterial, hence not a horse at all — just muscular, as a stallion is, as a word is that’s denied striving families horsepower, any engine beyond their fragile bodies to propel them forward; the whole race: forward, even if it pits people against a people, even if it means rearing a rear end tender and raw. I love you, tar baby, I love you something strong.