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for Anselm Hollo Go out into brightened space out there the fainter yellowish place it makes for eye to enter out to greyed penumbra all the way to thoughtful searching sight of all beyond that solid red both brick and seeming metal roof or higher black beyond the genial slope I look at daily house top on my own way up to heaven. * Same roof, light’s gone down back of it, behind the crying end of day, “I need something to do,” it’s been again those other things, what’s out there, sodden edge of sea’s bay, city’s graveyard, park deserted, flattened aspect, leaves gone colored fall to sidewalk, street, the end of all these days but still this regal light. * Trees stripped, rather shed of leaves, the black solid trunks up to fibrous mesh of smaller branches, it is weather’s window, weather’s particular echo, here as if this place had been once, now vacant, a door that had had hinges swung in air’s peculiar emptiness, greyed, slumped elsewhere, asphalt blank of sidewalks, line of linearly absolute black metal fence. * Old sky freshened with cloud bulk slides over frame of window the shadings of softened greys a light of air up out of this dense high structured enclosure of buildings top or pushed up flat of bricked roof frame I love I love the safety of small world this door frame back of me the panes of simple glass yet airy up sweep of birch trees sit in flat below all designation declaration here as clouds move so simply away. * Windows now lit close out the upper dark the night’s a face three eyes far fainter than the day all faced with light inside the room makes eye re- flective see the common world as one again no outside coming in no more than walls and post- card pictures place faces across that cautious dark the tree no longer seen more than black edge close branches somehow still between. * He was at the edge of this reflective echo the words blown back in air a bubble of suddenly apparent person who walked to sit down by the familiar brook and thought about his fading life all “fading life” in tremulous airy perspect saw it hover in the surface of that moving darkness at the edge of sun’s passing water’s sudden depth his own hands’ knotted surface the sounding in himself of some other. * One forty five afternoon red car parked left hand side of street no distinguishing feature still wet day a bicycle across the way a green door- way with arched upper window a backyard edge of back wall to enclosed alley low down small windows and two other cars green and blue parked too and miles and more miles still to go. * This early still sunless morning when a chair’s creak translates to cat’s cry a blackness still out the window might be apparent night when the house still sleeping behind me seems a bag of immense empty silence and I feel the children still breathing still shifting their dreams an enigma will soon arrive here and the loved one centers all in her heavy sleeping arm out the leg pushed down bedclothes this body unseen un- known placed out there in night I can feel all about me still sitting in this small spare pool of light watching the letters the words try to speak. * Classic emptiness it sits out there edge of hierarchic roof top it marks with acid fine edge of apparent difference it is there here here that sky so up and out and where it wants to be no birds no other thing can for a moment distract it be beyond its simple space.

while he lives here’s a list of images light in a filthy glass pigeon dead on the high spiked window clear plastic bag above him full of water if water could kill everything that lives in you & it can — i sit in a corner of the cancer ward fingering the app that shows me other faggots in this hospital chat with one i might meet in radiology but don’t       instead make the sick man laugh while he’s conscious compliment his gown his new brutal cheekbones that appeared with the chemo if only it were simple as a magnet sucking the bad metals out of him if only i could make a better list more magic      less language periphrastic & restorative if only i met that stranger in the basement & our pleasure rose through the hospital bliss poultice for the sorrow-skinned who sit half-conscious & half-machinery while the sick man lives all i can do is recount the vast pastoral of his illness when he is gone i’m counting on all the good flooding back his beard a collapsed country i’ll refuge inside his laugh a memory so liquid i’ll hear it when anyone opens a window to scare the birds

We scratch at the backyard together through leaf mould, worm casings she kicks off in a fan behind her. I use a stick to dig, to find for her what she’s shown me near the roots, at the edge of a step—sticky slug on the underside of a hosta’s leaf. How complicated she is and how resigned. Between her beak and my outstretched hand, the worm’s writhing. Then the long slick going down. It fills the throat, like all that’s swallowed. Her head chucks it back, for the worm again dark. The hen’s pupil dilates. She wends and follows. Her queries, sighs, low gurgles, the hastening click of her nails on pavement then hungry again into the grass. Grubs are larger than pale yellow larvae I prize from inside chestnuts. These mucousy blind wanderers she eats right from my palm. Nevertheless I am repulsed by my husband’s embrace. I turn now from his thick belly, breasts, his interests. A body I had clambered over, loved. I scrabble, struggle. I cover myself. Another sticky truth dug up that I must re-bury— sorry on hands and knees, hungry and wary.

In the month of the long decline of roses I, beholding the summer dead before me, Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent, Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions Half divided the eyelids of the sunset; Till I heard as it were a noise of waters Moving tremulous under feet of angels Multitudinous, out of all the heavens; Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage, Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow; And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels, Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight, Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel, Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not, Winds not born in the north nor any quarter, Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine; Heard between them a voice of exultation, "Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded, Even like as a leaf the year is withered, All the fruits of the day from all her branches Gathered, neither is any left to gather. All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms, All are taken away; the season wasted, Like an ember among the fallen ashes. Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight, Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost, We bring flowers that fade not after autumn, Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons, Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser), Woven under the eyes of stars and planets When low light was upon the windy reaches Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows And green fields of the sea that make no pasture: Since the winter begins, the weeping winter, All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever."

His heart is like a boat that sets forth alone on the ocean and goes far out from him, as Aphrodite proceeds on her pleasure journeys. He pours the gold down the runnels into a great mystery under the sand. When he pulls it up by the feet and knocks off the scale, it is a god. What is it she finds with those men that equals this dark birthing? He makes each immortal manifest. The deities remain invisible in their pretty gardens of grass and violets, of daffodils and jasmine. Even his wife lives like that. Going on yachts, speaking to the captains in the familiar. Let them have it, the noons and rain and joy. He makes a world here out of frog songs and packed earth. He made his wife so she contains the green-fleshed melons of Lindos, thalo blue of the sea, and one ripe peach at five in the morning. He fashioned her by the rules, with love, made her with rage and disillusion.

There is no noisier place than the suburbs, someone once said to me as we were walking along a fairway, and every day is delighted to offer fresh evidence: the chainsaw, the leaf-blower blowing one leaf around an enormous house with columns, on Mondays and Thursdays the garbage truck equipped with air brakes, reverse beeper, and merciless grinder. There’s dogs, hammers, backhoes or serious earthmovers if today is not your day. How can the birds get a peep or a chirp in edgewise, I would like to know? But this morning is different, only a soft clicking sound and the low talk of two workmen working on the house next door, laying tile I am guessing. Otherwise, all quiet for a change, just the clicking of tiles being handled and their talking back and forth in Spanish then one of them asking in English “What was her name?” and the silence of the other.

Her face          Her tongue       Her wit so fair             so sweet          so sharp first bent         then drew         then hit mine eye         mine ear          my heart Mine eye         Mine ear          My heart to like             to learn            to love her face          her tongue       her wit doth lead         doth teach       doth move Her face          Her tongue       Her wit with beams      with sound       with art doth blind       doth charm       doth knit mine eye         mine ear          my heart Mine eye         Mine ear          My heart with life          with hope         with skill her face         her tongue       her wit doth feed       doth feast         doth fill O face            O tongue          O wit with frowns      with checks      with smart wrong not       vex not            wound not mine eye         mine ear          my heart This eye         This ear            This heart shall joy         shall yield          shall swear her face          her tongue         her wit to serve          to trust             to fear.

Near Ekuvukeni, in Natal, South Africa, a woman carries water on her head. After a year of drought, when one child in three is at risk of death, she returns from a distant well, carrying water on her head. The pumpkins are gone, the tomatoes withered, yet the woman carries water on her head. The cattle kraals are empty, the goats gaunt— no milk now for children, but she is carrying water on her head. The engineers have reversed the river: those with power can keep their power, but one woman is carrying water on her head. In the homelands, where the dusty crowds watch the empty roads for water trucks, one woman trusts herself with treasure, and carries water on her head. The sun does not dissuade her, not the dried earth that blows against her, as she carries the water on her head. In a huge and dirty pail, with an idle handle, resting on a narrow can, this woman is carrying water on her head. This woman, who girds her neck with safety pins, this one who carries water on her head, trusts her own head to bring to her people what they need now between life and death: She is carrying them water on her head.

If I am in the house beams posts planks siding slate protect us Wall guard us against the night-terrors Floor shore us up above the void below cover us roof enclose us from the void above door keep out the angry stranger Hearth cherish the fire windows be beacons breathe out my warm air chimney while I am in the house In this room my eyes be twelve-paned windows clock pump my blood cover my nakedness, rug curtains be eyelids sofa, I rest on your strong thighs Where is the soul’s seat? Doctors have cut up frogs and not found love. Is this my reason? I in myself

Because this evening Miss Hoang Yen sat down with me in the small tiled room of her family house I am unable to sleep. We shared a glass of cold and sweet water. On a blue plate her mother brought us cake and smiled her betel-black teeth at me but I did not feel strange in the house my country had tried to bomb into dust. In English thick and dazed as blood she told me how she watched our planes cross her childhood’s sky, all the children of Hanoi carried in darkness to mountain hamlets, Nixon’s Christmas bombing. She let me hold her hand, her shy unmoving fingers, and told me how afraid she was those days and how this fear had dug inside her like a worm and lives inside her still, won’t die or go away. And because she’s stronger, she comforted me, said I’m not to blame, the million sorrows alive in her gaze. With the dead we share no common rooms. With the frightened we can’t think straight; no words can bring the burning city back. Outside on Hung Dao Street I tried to say good-bye and held her hand too long so she looked back through traffic towards her house and with her eyes she told me I should leave. All night I ached for her and for myself and nothing I could think or pray would make it stop. Some birds sang morning home across the lake. In small reed boats the lotus gatherers sailed out among their resuming white blossoms. Hanoi, 1990