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The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains,- Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? Is not the Vision He, tho' He be not that which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him? Dark is the world to thee; thyself art the reason why, For is He not all but thou, that hast power to feel "I am I"? Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom, Making Him broken gleams and a stifled splendour and gloom. Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet- Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. God is law, say the wise; O soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. Law is God, say some; no God at all, says the fool, For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool; And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see; But if we could see and hear, this Vision-were it not He?

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around The castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie! There Simmer first unfald her robes, And there the langest tarry: For there I took the last Fareweel O' my sweet Highland Mary. How sweetly bloom'd the gay, green birk, How rich the hawthorn's blossom; As underneath their fragrant shade, I clasp'd her to my bosom! The golden Hours, on angel wings, Flew o'er me and my Dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary. Wi' mony a vow, and lock'd embrace, Our parting was fu' tender; And pledging aft to meet again, We tore oursels asunder: But Oh! fell Death's untimely frost, That nipt my Flower sae early! Now green's the sod, and cauld's the clay, That wraps my Highland Mary! O pale, pale now, those rosy lips, I aft hae kiss'd sae fondly! And clos'd for ay the sparkling glance, That dwalt on me sae kindly! And mouldering now in silent dust, That heart that lo'ed me dearly! But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary.

—Zelda Fitzgerald, 1939 Dear One, Do you have the time? Can you take the time? Can you make the time? To visit me? The hospital doors have opened to spring, and its land is high, dear one, each slope with a vapor of crocuses. Its citizens, alas, are low. Despondent, in fact, though a jar of sun tea tans on the sill. The woman beside me has opened the gift of a china doll, an antique Frozen Charlotte. Glass face, a cap of china hair, shellacked to the sheen of a chestnut. At breakfast the shifting returned, dreadful within me:colors were infinite, part of the air. . . lines were free of the masses they held. The melon, a cloud; and the melon, an empty, oval lariat. They have moved the canvas chair from the window. Sun, enhanced by the brewing jar, threw an apricot scorch on the fabric. The fruit, a cloud. The fruit, a doll-sized, empty lariat. D. O., into what shape will our shaplessness flow? Dear One, Italian escapes me. Still, I float to the operas of Hasse and Handel, a word now and then lifting through . . .sole,libertà. In an earlier time, the thrum-plumped voice of a countertenor—half male, half female—might place him among us, we who are thickened by fracturings. D. O., now and then, my words break free of the masses they hold. Think of wind, how it barks through the reeds of a dog's throat. How the pungent, meaty stream of it cracks into something like words—but not. I just sit in the sun room then, slumped in my fur and slabber, feeling the wolf begin, back away, then some great-jawed, prehistoric other begin, back away, then the gill-less, the gilled, then the first pulsed flecks begin, back away, until only a wind remains, vast and seamless. No earth, no heavens. No rise, no dip. No single flash of syllable that might be me. Or you. D. O., Now a gauze of snow on the crocuses! I woke to its first brilliance—midnight, great moon— and walked through the hallways. The pin-shaped leaves of the potted cosmos threw a netted shadow, and I stopped in its fragile harmony, my arms, bare feet, the folds of my limp gown striped by such weightless symmetry I might have been myself again. Through an open screen door I saw a patient, drawn out by the brightness perhaps, her naked body a ghastly white, her face a ghastly, frozen white, fixed in a bow-mouthed syncope, like something out of time. As we are, D. O., here in the Highland, time's infinite, cyclic now-and-then one simple flake of consciousness against the heated tongue. Dear One, My Italian improves: sole,libertà, and Dio, of course, D. O.! (Although He has forsaken me.) The tea at the window gleams like the flank of a chestnut horse. It darkens imperceptibly, as madness does, or dusk. All morning, I held a length of cotton twine— a shaggy, oakum filament— between the jar and brewing sun. We made a budding universe: the solar disc, the glassy globe of reddish sea, the stillness in the firmament. At last across the cotton twine a smoke began, a little ashless burn, Dio, that flared and died so suddenly its light has yet to reach me.

I’m honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein. —President George W. Bush, Washington DC, May 25 , 2004 “Just ask yourself,” we said back in those days, “Is this world better off without Saddam Hussein?” Now that’s a simple question. Just ask yourself. It turned up starkly, undeniably As that left hand inside the trench Marines were digging At the prison turned “facility.” That was one day’s headlined excavation. Meanwhile, the relics from the tell near Nasiriyah Were looted from the National Museum. Is our world better off without Saddam Hussein, who had cut off so many other hands? Our own president had grateful thousands On hand to honor him, give him a hand In DC on the birthday of the Sage of Concord. In other words, though, is this world better off Without those who have made it better off? It’s a bit of a riddle, really, how to tell, But each old hand among us has a hunch. Is our world better off without Bobby E. Beasely? Michael Yury Tarlavsky? Craig W. Cherry? Yadir G. Reynoso? Joshua I. Bunch? These soldiers’ names graced the obituary Page that day in the LATimes. It’s archived. Check it. But what can we tell from a name? Or measly Obit? Ask yourself. —Well, more than a bit Of obit is in the name Tobit, but just what Tobit of Nineveh—praised for preparing For righteous burial the Judahites Who fell in war against Assyria, And blessed with a devoted son who saved him— What Tobit could now have to do with us, Not even our extravagant friend Emerson —Though wait!Emer? Cuchulain’s perfect mate, Worked hand in hand with him, possessor of The six great gifts of womanhood, from needlework Through chastity to sweet words and gentle speech? —Perhaps not even Emerson could tell, Who lauded nature’s “rounds” and scorned the divisive “line,” Its “bounds of good and ill,” and praised perverse Returns (“Evil will bless, and ice will burn”), And who would have turned 199 That day in the merry month of Jumada al-awwal When Bush addressed that brave unnamed Baghdadi. —Raymond J. Faulstich, Jr., Kane M. Funke. —What names people have! Stephen I. Yenser! What monikers, what handles for their children. —Daniel Lee Galvan...Anyway, without them, mind you, We’d still have that butcher Saddam Hussein. —Wait!With them, you mean, we’d still have Saddam? —Well, it can be perplexing when it’s put like that. —Bemusing. Like the sound of one hand clapping. —Or one hand washing itself. Is our world better Off without Roberto Abad? —Abad, Roberto: What kind of name is that, in any case? Middle Eastern? And where’s the middle initial? To tell him from his father, of course. A typo? For Bad, Roberto A.? “Good is a good doctor, But Bad is sometimes better” (Emerson)? Or W, where Emerson and Bush dovetail? —It seems Roberto got his girlfriend pregnant In spite of the “Campaign for Children and Families” Between Iraqi tours in case he didn’t come back From his second, which of course he didn’t, Not for a second, even, to glimpse his son, Whose name we are not told.Hussein, perhaps—or George.

On the crowded hill bordering the mill, across the shallow stream, nearer than they seem, they wait and will be waiting. Rain. The small smilax is the same to the fly as the big bush of lilacs exploding nearby. The rain may be abating. On the quiet hill beside the droning mill, across the dirty stream, nearer than they seem, they wait and will be waiting. The glass-eyed cicada drones in the linden draped like a tent above three polished stones. Aphids swarm at the scent of the yellow petals. A bird comes to prod a clump of wet fur. The ferns idiotically nod when she takes it away with her. Something somewhere settles. On the crowded hill bordering the mill is our best cemetery, pretty, but not very. All are welcome here. Sun finds a bare teak box on the tidy green plot. It finds lichen-crusted blocks fringed with forget-me-not. Angels preen everywhere. On the crowded hill bordering the mill is our best cemetery, pretty, but not very. All are welcome here.

beside the grave the ties gave was she there everywhere in the fern or return when he called her of black alder on her lips the fresh chips or felled tree she was free and no child and too wild

The Ozarks are where defeated assassins, the unholy, and monsters come to retire. The proper soil and crooked moonlight grow back the disemboweled, the decapitated, while we collect arrears in child support for our demi-god children. The procession of taillights lined deep down the logging trails. Along the way, there was a gentleman arguing with his soul over his suicide. I, tongue of snakes. Cut up, dipped in powdered sugar, scattered to the ants in the deepest corner of Mt. Nebo as an insult, bind my ghost to the mountain. Typhoon collected the few precious scales left of me from the undertow. My southern accent-muscle burned up from haunting your life/house. Now, let daybreak be my head and the year, my whole body. An online southern Christian university ordained my smoker’s cough to be a dove. My favorite exorcism: The demon, steeped in corn bread philosophy, does not have enough ass to carry off the jeans he advertises as he kneels down to the priest and holy water. Years ago, as a child, I climbed the levee and made a hole in the air. That’s where I will rest, but the gate is not wide enough. Like my burial site, I am party-size.

He’ll have been the last of his kind here then. The flagstones, dry-stone walls, the slumping thatch, out-offices and cow cabins, the patch of haggard he sowed spuds and onions in— all of it a century out of fashion— all giving way to the quiet rising damp of hush and vacancy once he is gone. Those long contemplations at the fire, cats curling at the door, the dog’s lame waltzing, the kettle, the candle and the lamp— all still, all quenched, all darkened— the votives and rosaries and novenas, the pope and Kennedy and Sacred Heart, the bucket, the basket, the latch and lock, the tractor that took him into town and back for the pension cheque and messages and pub, the chair, the bedstead and the chamber pot, everything will amount to nothing much. Everything will slowly disappear. And some grandniece, a sister’s daughter’s daughter, one blue August in ten or fifteen years will marry well and will inherit it: the cottage ruins, the brown abandoned land. They’ll come to see it in a hired car. The kindly Liverpudlian she’s wed, in concert with a local auctioneer, will post a sign to offer Site for Sale. The acres that he labored in will merge with a neighbor’s growing pasturage and all the decades of him will begin to blur, easing, as the far fields of his holding did, up the hill, over the cliff, into the sea.

Wyatt, with no insurance on his own head, watching the execution of Anne Boleyn from his cell in the Tower, while beyond on Tower Hill her lovers also are executed, reflects upon his wasted virtue and now redundant innocence, rueful he ever did let his name be known beyond the door of his soul or hung his star from fate thrones.

“Crawl in,” said the witch, “and see if it’s hot enough to put the bread in.” —Hansel and Gretel All roads lead to rooms. —Irish Proverb a stark Quake a numb Calm * clutching my Crumbl ejumble among Tombs and in Caves my Dream Vision Oarsman, oarsman, Where have you been? I’ve been to Leafy, I’ve dismembered the Queen. Oarsman, oarsman What did you there? I hid in a cleft, I braided the air. hearing our oars where their freed goatsteps sped and are silent by an extinct river O Babylon when I lay down alert for sliding cataracts where in corridors the print of dancing feet beyond poise I am prey posing in snow-light being of human form clothed in the scales of a fish Count him a magician he controls the storm walked on the sea shouting that he is the Logos of God that he is the Word original and first begotten attended by power upheld by his mother (a very active gesturing baby) what if Simon Peter Jesus himself walked among the cold stone faces shouting NIKA emptyeyed blanksmiling Swiftness divination these false gods their commerce is the cloud so they can learn what is preparing in the sky Artificer of the universe Magician who controls the storm to see you in one spot I count the clouds others count the seasons Dreaming of archipelagos and the desert I have lived through weeks of years I have raked up fallen leaves for winter after winter across an empire of icy light Light of our dark is the fruit of my womb or night falling through the reign of splashes Liquid light that bathes the landscape in my figure Clairvoyant Ireland eras and eras encircled by sea the barrows of my ancestors have spilled their bones across the singing ear in hear or shell as wreck or wrack may be in daring There were giants on the earth in those days feasts then on hill and fort All night the borders of my bed carve paths across my face and I always forget to leave my address frightened by the way that midnight grips my palm and tells me that my lines are slipping out of question Divorce I manumission round with a gentle blow the casting branch my right hand My covenant was garment concealed or mask or matron Proceed with measured step the field and action of the law Like day the tables twelve whip torch and radiate halo Sky brewing coming storm Faraway over the hill when Hell was harrowed and earth was brought to heel how the hills spread away how the walls crumbled deathcolored frozen in time Where was the senate   zone and horizon Where are the people   mountain of light to the east Tell them I sail for the deep sea rest a painless extraction a joyful day bird of passage over all I love Goodbye to all the little fir trees of the future far   off    in    the    dread blindness    I   heard   light eagerly   I   struck   my foot against    a      stone      and raised    a    din    at    the sound    the   blessed    Paul shut   the   door   which   had been   open   and   bolted   it