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—Norton Island, Maine For ten days now, two luna moths remain silk-winged and lavish as a double broach pinned beneath the porch light of my cabin. Two of them, patinaed that sea-glass green of copper weather vanes nosing the wind, the sun-lit green of rockweed, the lichen’s green scabbing-over of the bouldered shore, the plush green peat that carpets the island, that hushes, sinks then holds a boot print for days, and the sapling-green of new pines sprouting through it. The miraculous green origami of their wings—false eyed, doomed and sensual as the mermaid’s long green fins: a green siren calling from the moonlight. A green siren calling from the moonlight, from the sweet gum leaves and paper birches that shed, like tiny white decrees, scrolled bark. They emerge from cocoons like greased hinges, all pheromone and wing, instinct and flutter. They rise, hardwired, driven, through the creaking pine branches tufted with beard moss and fog. Two luna moths flitting like exotic birds towards only each other and light, in these their final few days, they mate, then starving they wait, inches apart, on my cabin wall to die, to share fully each pure and burning moment. They are, like desire itself, born without mouths. What, if not this, is love?

After Miguel and Erykah Badu If you be the needle I be the LP. If you be the buffed wall, I be the Krylon. If you be the backspin, I be the break. If you be the head nod, I be the bass line. If you be a Phillie, I be the razor. If you be microphone, then I be palm. If you be cipher, then I be beatbox. If you be hands thrown up, then I be yes, yes, y’all. If you be throwback, then I be remix. If you be footwork, then I be uprock. If you be turntable, then I be crossfader. If you be downtown C train, then I be southbound Red Line. If you be shell toes, then I be hoodie. If you be freestyle, then I be piece book. If you be Sharpie, then I be tag. If you be boy, then I be girl who wants to sync samples into classic.

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips, decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips. As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak, inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips. Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping 'tween floorboards, wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips. Engines grinding, rotating, smokin', gotta pull back some. Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips. Gotta love us girls, just struttin' down Manhattan streets killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips. Crying 'bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.

To look at this fictitious steed You’d think some mixed-up farmer Had crossed an eagle with a horse. It carries knights in armor Through cloud fields at terrific speed. I wish the Hippogriff Would take me for a ride. Of course It’s not real. But oh, if . . .!

On shanks’ mare Argyle talked to himself. Alone, he’d carry on whole colloquies en route to some poor corpse’s obsequies— these dialogues, the way he kept his wits about him, body and soul together, fit for the wretched work of sin-eating. Sometimes he counted words or parts of words as if they amounted to something more than sound and sense attuned between his ears, as, for example, how coincident: the way grace and gratis, wherefore gratitude partook a kinship such as cousins do, singing the same tune in different voices, much as grave and gravitas, then gravity kept one earthbound, grounded, humble as the mud— the humus, so-called, God wrought humans from. Or how from Adam’s rib was fashioned Eve— bone of his own bone, flesh of his flesh— whom he got gravid by implanting seed, in her unfathomably fecund Eden. The memory of a woman’s company would bring his ambulations to a halt to aim his gaping face due heavenward, the dewy air her touch, her taste, sweet salt.

William Morris I —how we’re carpet-making by the river a long dream to unroll and somehow time to pole a boat I designed a carpet today— dogtooth violets and spoke to a full hall now that the gall of our society’s corruption stains throughout Dear Janey I am tossed by many things If the change would bring better art but if it would not? O to be home to sail the flood I’m possessed and do possess Employer of labor, true— to get done the work of the hand… I’d be a rich man had I yielded on a few points of principle Item sabots blouse— I work in the dye-house myself Good sport dyeing tapestry wool I like the indigo vats I’m drawing patterns so fast Last night in sleep I drew a sausage— somehow I had to eat it first Colorful shores—mouse ear... horse-mint... The Strawberry Thief our new chintz II Yeats saw the betterment of the workers by religion—slow in any case as the drying of the moon He was not understood— I rang the bell for him to sit down Yeats left the lecture circuit yet he could say: no one so well loved as Morris III Entered new waters Studied Icelandic At home last minute signs to post: Vetch grows here—Please do not mow We saw it—Iceland—the end of the world rising out of the sea— cliffs, caves like 13th century illuminations of hell-mouths Rain squalls through moonlight Cold wet is so damned wet Iceland’s black sand Stone buntings’ fly-up-dispersion Sea-pink and campion a Persian carpet

For Geoff Dyer his front yard is the true Benares — Devara Dasimayya, tr. A.K. Ramanujan His death in Benares Won’t save the assassin From certain hell, Any more than a dip In the Ganges will send Frogs—or you—to paradise. My home, says Kabir, Is where there’s no day, no night, And no holy book in sight To squat on our lives.

Farewell thou thing, time past so known, so dear To me as blood to life and spirit; near, Nay, thou more near than kindred, friend, man, wife, Male to the female, soul to body; life To quick action, or the warm soft side Of the resigning, yet resisting bride. The kiss of virgins, first fruits of the bed, Soft speech, smooth touch, the lips, the maidenhead : These and a thousand sweets could never be So near or dear as thou wast once to me. O thou, the drink of gods and angels! wine That scatter'st spirit and lust, whose purest shine More radiant than the summer's sunbeam shows; Each way illustrious, brave, and like to those Comets we see by night, whose shagg'd portents Foretell the coming of some dire events, Or some full flame which with a pride aspires, Throwing about his wild and active fires; 'Tis thou, above nectar, O divinest soul ! Eternal in thyself, that can'st control That which subverts whole nature, grief and care, Vexation of the mind, and damn'd despair. 'Tis thou alone who, with thy mystic fan, Workst more than wisdom, art, or nature can To rouse the sacred madness and awake The frost-bound blood and spirits, and to make Them frantic with thy raptures flashing through The soul like lightning, and as active too. 'Tis not Apollo can, or those thrice three Castalian sisters, sing, if wanting thee. Horace, Anacreon, both had lost their fame, Hads't thou not fill'd them with thy fire and flame. Phoebean splendour! and thou, Thespian spring! Of which sweet swans must drink before they sing Their true pac'd numbers and their holy lays, Which makes them worthy cedar and the bays. But why, why longer do I gaze upon Thee with the eye of admiration? Since I must leave thee, and enforc'd must say To all thy witching beauties, Go away. But if thy whimpering looks do ask me why, Then know that nature bids thee go, not I. 'Tis her erroneous self has made a brain Uncapable of such a sovereign As is thy powerful self.   Prithee not smile, Or smile more inly, lest thy looks beguile My vows denounc'd in zeal, which thus much show thee That I have sworn but by thy looks to know thee. Let others drink thee freely, and desire Thee and their lips espous'd, while I admire And love thee, but not taste thee. Let my muse Fail of thy former helps, and only use Her inadultrate strength: what's done by me Hereafter shall smell of the lamp, not thee.

His father carved umbrella handles, but when umbrella handles were made by machinery, there was only one man for whom his father could work. The pay was small, though it had once been a good trade. They lived in the poorest part of the ghetto, near the lots where people dump ashes. His father was anxious that his son should stay at school and get out of the mess he himself was in. “Learning is the best merchandise,” he would say. His father died; there was his mother to be taken care of. He taught in a school in the ghetto. Some pupils came at nine and stayed until three; others came after public school and stayed until evening; most of the pupils came in the evening. The courses were crammed, lasting a few months, pupils and teachers anxious to be rid of the matter as soon as possible. So he worked day and night, week-days and Sunday. His mother was dead. It was cold in the street and windy. A dry snow had fallen and the feet of the walkers were turning it into brown sand. He was forty. Now he was free. To do what? He knew no one whom he cared to marry. And who would go into his poverty? If he were to give up this work he knew so well, to what else could he turn? He would just keep on. He had lost this world and knew there was no other.

The last time he cut his mother’s hair the rude morning sun left no corner of her kitchen private, the light surgically clean where it fell on his scissors. Her hair fell in a blonde circle on the lake blue tile—smell of coffee and cinnamon; her laughing shook her head,Hold still, he said, his hands surfeit with the curl and softness of her hair. Three weeks after her death, a stranger entered the salon and settled in the chair. She had the color and shape of his mother’s hair, and when he sunk his hands in it, the texture, even cowlicks, individual as freckles—same. Twice he had to leave the room, and twice, he returned—still, when he touched her hair, it blurred. Hold still, he said,hold still.