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I. ANCIENT OVERTURE OF HÉRODIADE The Nurse (Incantation) Abolished, and her frightful wing in the tears Of the basin, abolished, that mirrors forth our fears, The naked golds lashing the crimson space, An Aurora—heraldic plumage—has chosen to embrace Our cinerary tower of sacrifice, Heavy tomb that a songbird has fled, lone caprice Of a dawn vainly decked out in ebony plumes… Ah, mansion this sad, fallen country assumes! No splashing! the gloomy water, standing still, No longer visited by snowy quill Or fabled swan, reflects the bereaving Of autumn extinguished by its own unleaving, Of the swan when amidst the cold white tomb Of its feathers, it buried its head, undone By the pure diamond of a star, but one Of long ago, which never even shone. Crime! torture! ancient dawn! bright pyre! Empurpled sky, complicit in the mire, And stained-glass windows opening red on carnage. The strange chamber, framed in all the baggage Of a warlike age, its goldwork dull and faint, Has yesteryear’s snows instead of its ancient tint; And its pearl-gray tapestry, useless creases With the buried eyes of prophetesses Offering Magi withered fingers. One, With floral past enwoven on my gown Bleached in an ivory chest and with a sky Bestrewn with birds amidst the embroidery Of tarnished silver, seems a phantom risen, An aroma, roses, rising from the hidden Couch, now void, the snuffed-out candle shrouds, An aroma, over the sachet, of frozen golds, A drift of flowers unfaithful to the moon (Though the taper’s quenched, petals still fall from one), Flowers whose long regrets and stems appear Drenched in a lonely vase to languish there… An Aurora dragged her wings in the basin’s tears! Magical shadow with symbolic powers! A voice from the distant past, an evocation, Is it not mine prepared for incantation? In the yellow folds of thought, still unexhumed, Lingering, and like an antique cloth perfumed, Spread on a pile of monstrances grown cold, Through ancient hollows and through stiffened folds Pierced in the rhythm of the pure lace shroud Through which the old veiled brightness is allowed To mount, in desperation, shall arise (But oh, the distance hidden in those cries!) The old veiled brightness of a strange gilt-silver, Of the languishing voice, estranged and unfamiliar: Will it scatter its gold in an ultimate splendor, And, in the hour of its agony, render Itself as the anthem for psalms of petition? For all are alike in being brought to perdition By the power of old silence and deepening gloom, Fated, monotonous, vanquished, undone, Like the sluggish waters of an ancient pond. Sometimes she sang an incoherent song. Lamentable sign! the bed of vellum sheets, Useless and closed–not linen!—vainly waits, Bereft now of the cherished grammary That spelled the figured folds of reverie, The silken tent that harbored memory, The fragrance of sleeping hair. Were these its treasure? Cold child, she held within her subtle pleasure, Shivering with flowers in her walks at dawn, Or when the pomegranate’s flesh is torn By wicked night! Alone, the crescent moon On the iron clockface is a pendulum Suspending Lucifer: the clepsydra pours Dark drops in grief upon the stricken hours As, wounded, each one wanders a dim shade On undeciphered paths without a guide! All this the king knows not, whose salary Has fed so long this ag è d breast now dry. Her father knows it no more than the cruel Glacier mirroring his arms of steel, When sprawled on a pile of corpses without coffins Smelling obscurely of resin, he deafens With dark silver trumpets the ancient pines! Will he ever come back from the Cisalpines? Soon enough! for all is bad dream and foreboding! On the fingernail raised in the stained glass, according To the memory of the trumpets, the old sky burns, And to an envious candle it turns A finger. And soon, when the sad sun sinks, It shall pierce through the body of wax till it shrinks! No sunset, but the red awakening Of the last day concluding everything Struggles so sadly that time disappears, The redness of apocalypse, whose tears Fall on the child, exiled to her own proud Heart, as the swan makes its plumage a shroud For its eyes, the old swan, and is carried away From the plumage of grief to the eternal highway Of its hopes, where it looks on the diamonds divine Of a moribund star, which never more shall shine!

When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai in the gray rain, in the Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty, he fell straight as a pine, he fell as Ajax fell in Homer in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge the woodsman returned for two days to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing and on the third day he brought his uncle. They stacked logs in the resinous air, hacking the small limbs off, tying those bundles separately. The slabs near the root were quartered and still they were awkwardly large; the logs from the midtree they halved: ten bundles and four great piles of fragrant wood, moons and quarter moons and half moons ridged by the saw’s tooth. The woodsman and the old man his uncle are standing in midforest on a floor of pine silt and spring mud. They have stopped working because they are tired and because I have imagined no pack animal or primitive wagon. They are too canny to call in neighbors and come home with a few logs after three days’ work. They are waiting for me to do something or for the overseer of the Great Lord to come and arrest them. How patient they are! The old man smokes a pipe and spits. The young man is thinking he would be rich if he were already rich and had a mule. Ten days of hauling and on the seventh day they’ll probably be caught, go home empty-handed or worse. I don’t know whether they’re Japanese or Mycenaean and there’s nothing I can do. The path from here to that village is not translated. A hero, dying, gives off stillness to the air. A man and a woman walk from the movies to the house in the silence of separate fidelities. There are limits to imagination.

To those of a certain temperament, there is nothing worse than the thought of something hidden, secret, withheld from their knowing— especially if they suspect that another knows about it and has even, perhaps, connived at keeping it concealed. D. H. Lawrence seems to have been irritated no end by the thought that people were having sex and not telling him. Freud too. —Ah but then Freud arranged it so that everyone had to tell. His psychoanalysis lights up the depths, makes our tangled web transparent, to the point where I can see all the way down to It. And the process moves outward in increasing rings: The Master analyses his disciples. Who thereby—transparent now—become masters and, in turn, take on others, patients or disciples, to analyse. So that eventually there are no secrets. Except, of course, those of the first Master, the Self-Analysed. Which is to say, the only private One, sole Unrevealed. Opaque center of His universal panopticon. While we see only His words, His daughter, His cigar. Poor Lawrence.

I am that which began; Out of me the years roll; Out of me God and man; I am equal and whole; God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul. Before ever land was, Before ever the sea, Or soft hair of the grass, Or fair limbs of the tree, Or the fresh-coloured fruit of my branches, I was, and thy soul was in me. First life on my sources First drifted and swam; Out of me are the forces That save it or damn; Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird; before God was, I am. Beside or above me Nought is there to go; Love or unlove me, Unknow me or know, I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow. I the mark that is missed And the arrows that miss, I the mouth that is kissed And the breath in the kiss, The search, and the sought, and the seeker, the soul and the body that is. I am that thing which blesses My spirit elate; That which caresses With hands uncreate My limbs unbegotten that measure the length of the measure of fate. But what thing dost thou now, Looking Godward, to cry "I am I, thou art thou, I am low, thou art high"? I am thou, whom thou seekest to find him; find thou but thyself, thou art I. I the grain and the furrow, The plough-cloven clod And the ploughshare drawn thorough, The germ and the sod, The deed and the doer, the seed and the sower, the dust which is God. Hast thou known how I fashioned thee, Child, underground? Fire that impassioned thee, Iron that bound, Dim changes of water, what thing of all these hast thou known of or found? Canst thou say in thine heart Thou hast seen with thine eyes With what cunning of art Thou wast wrought in what wise, By what force of what stuff thou wast shapen, and shown on my breast to the skies? Who hath given, who hath sold it thee, Knowledge of me? Hath the wilderness told it thee? Hast thou learnt of the sea? Hast thou communed in spirit with night? have the winds taken counsel with thee? Have I set such a star To show light on thy brow That thou sawest from afar What I show to thee now? Have ye spoken as brethren together, the sun and the mountains and thou? What is here, dost thou know it? What was, hast thou known? Prophet nor poet Nor tripod nor throne Nor spirit nor flesh can make answer, but only thy mother alone. Mother, not maker, Born, and not made; Though her children forsake her, Allured or afraid, Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, she stirs not for all that have prayed. A creed is a rod, And a crown is of night; But this thing is God, To be man with thy might, To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life as the light. I am in thee to save thee, As my soul in thee saith; Give thou as I gave thee, Thy life-blood and breath, Green leaves of thy labour, white flowers of thy thought, and red fruit of thy death. Be the ways of thy giving As mine were to thee; The free life of thy living, Be the gift of it free; Not as servant to lord, nor as master to slave, shalt thou give thee to me. O children of banishment, Souls overcast, Were the lights ye see vanish meant Alway to last, Ye would know not the sun overshining the shadows and stars overpast. I that saw where ye trod The dim paths of the night Set the shadow called God In your skies to give light; But the morning of manhood is risen, and the shadowless soul is in sight. The tree many-rooted That swells to the sky With frondage red-fruited, The life-tree am I; In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves: ye shall live and not die. But the Gods of your fashion That take and that give, In their pity and passion That scourge and forgive, They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live. My own blood is what stanches The wounds in my bark; Stars caught in my branches Make day of the dark, And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark. Where dead ages hide under The live roots of the tree, In my darkness the thunder Makes utterance of me; In the clash of my boughs with each other ye hear the waves sound of the sea. That noise is of Time, As his feathers are spread And his feet set to climb Through the boughs overhead, And my foliage rings round him and rustles, and branches are bent with his tread. The storm-winds of ages Blow through me and cease, The war-wind that rages, The spring-wind of peace, Ere the breath of them roughen my tresses, ere one of my blossoms increase. All sounds of all changes, All shadows and lights On the world's mountain-ranges And stream-riven heights, Whose tongue is the wind's tongue and language of storm-clouds on earth-shaking nights; All forms of all faces, All works of all hands In unsearchable places Of time-stricken lands, All death and all life, and all reigns and all ruins, drop through me as sands. Though sore be my burden And more than ye know, And my growth have no guerdon But only to grow, Yet I fail not of growing for lightnings above me or deathworms below. These too have their part in me, As I too in these; Such fire is at heart in me, Such sap is this tree's, Which hath in it all sounds and all secrets of infinite lands and of seas. In the spring-coloured hours When my mind was as May's, There brake forth of me flowers By centuries of days, Strong blossoms with perfume of manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays. And the sound of them springing And smell of their shoots Were as warmth and sweet singing And strength to my roots; And the lives of my children made perfect with freedom of soul were my fruits. I bid you but be; I have need not of prayer; I have need of you free As your mouths of mine air; That my heart may be greater within me, beholding the fruits of me fair. More fair than strange fruit is Of faiths ye espouse; In me only the root is That blooms in your boughs; Behold now your God that ye made you, to feed him with faith of your vows. In the darkening and whitening Abysses adored, With dayspring and lightning For lamp and for sword, God thunders in heaven, and his angels are red with the wrath of the Lord. O my sons, O too dutiful Toward Gods not of me, Was not I enough beautiful? Was it hard to be free? For behold, I am with you, am in you and of you; look forth now and see. Lo, winged with world's wonders, With miracles shod, With the fires of his thunders For raiment and rod, God trembles in heaven, and his angels are white with the terror of God. For his twilight is come on him, His anguish is here; And his spirits gaze dumb on him, Grown grey from his fear; And his hour taketh hold on him stricken, the last of his infinite year. Thought made him and breaks him, Truth slays and forgives; But to you, as time takes him, This new thing it gives, Even love, the beloved Republic, that feeds upon freedom and lives. For truth only is living, Truth only is whole, And the love of his giving, Man's polestar and pole; Man, pulse of my centre, and fruit of my body, and seed of my soul. One birth of my bosom; One beam of mine eye; One topmost blossom That scales the sky; Man, equal and one with me, man that is made of me, man that is I.

I drift into the sound of wind, how small my life must be to fit into his palm like that, holly leaf, bluejay feather, milkweed fluff, pin straw or sycamore pod, resembling scraps of light. The world slips through these fingers so easily, there’s so much to miss: the sociable bones linked up in supple rows, mineral seams just under the skin. I hold my palm against the sun and don’t see palm or sun, don’t hold anything in either hand. I look up, look away (what’s that?), I trip and stumble (fall again), find myself face down in duff, a foam of fallen live oak leaves, with only this life, mine at times.

My four-year-old daughter handed me a card. To Daddy written on the front and inside a rough field of  five-pointed lights, and the words You’re my favorite Daddy in the stars. In this western night we all light the sky like Vega, Deneb, Altair, Albireo, the Summer Triangle, Cygnus the Swan, our hair tangled with wood and gravel, our eyes like vacant docks that beckon every boat. Tell me about the word stars, I said. Oh, she said. Sorry. I didn’t know how to spell world.

Hold, memory, a vision out of Greece: The west wind breathes a ripening breath As each pear, pendant and golden, brushes Another, where four tilled acres glisten Winter and summer: fig, olive, currant, And the heavy succulent pomegranate —Sunstruck for the plucker’s hand. All this a stranger sees, palm on lintel, Sees the stately women of the royal rooms Murmuring over linen, looms humming; Sees boys, on pedestals, shine torches Which fire the eyes of Alkinöos’s hounds. So much of heroism wondrously found (Like a glinting pebble in a child’s hand, Borne upward to imagination’s shallows), As I’d gaze at snow blanketing West End, Hearing the story my father burnished Over a month of nights, so that the voyage Of the telling faded into the hours lived Beside that voice—whiskey rough—again Taking up the exile’s lament:hekatomb, Distaff, honeyed wine . . .

listen, a bad thing happened to my friend’s marriage, can’t tell you only can tell my own story which so far isn’t so bad: “Dad” and I stay married. so far. so good. so so. But it felt undoable. This lucky life every day, every day. every, day. (all the poetry books the goddamn same until one guy gets up and stuns the audience.) Joe Wenderoth, not by a long shot sober, says,I promised my wife I wouldn’t fuck anyone

Hey, diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.

I hear it at night when I turn out the light. It’s that creature who’s under my bed. He won’t go away. He’s determined to stay. But I wish he would beat it, instead. I told him to go, but he shook his head no. He was worse than an unwelcome guest. I gave him a nudge, but he still wouldn’t budge. It was hard to get rid of the pest. So I fired one hundred round cannon balls plundered from pirate ships sailing the seas. But he caught them barehanded and quickly grandstanded by juggling them nice as you please. The creature was slick. He was clever and quick. This called for a drastic maneuver. So I lifted my spread and charged under the bed with the roar of my mother’s new Hoover. But he snorted his nose and sucked in the long hose, the canister, cord, and the plug, and vacuumed in dust till I thought he would bust then he blew it all over the rug. Now this made me sore, so I cried, “This is war!” and sent in a contingent of fleas, an army of ants dressed in camouflage pants followed closely by big killer bees. But he welcomed them in With a sly, crafty grin, And he ate them with crackers and cheese. I screamed, “That’s enough!” It was time to get tough. “You asked for it, Creature,” I said, as I picked up and threw, with an aim sure and true, my gym sneaker under the bed. With each whiff of the sneaker the creature grew weaker. He staggered out gasping for air. He coughed and he sneezed and collapsed with a wheeze and accused me of not playing fair. Then holding his nose with his twelve hairy toes, the creature curled into a ball, and rolled ’cross the floor smashing right through the door. I was rid of him once and for all. The very next night when I turned out the light and was ready to lay down my head, I heard my kid brother cry out to my mother, “Hey, Ma, something’s under my bed.”