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Nothing nastier than a white person! She mutters as she irons alterations in the backroom of Charlotte’s Dress Shoppe. The steam rising from a cranberry wool comes alive with perspiration and stale Evening of Paris. Swamp she born from, swamp she swallow, swamp she got to sink again.

In the beginning was the word And the word was Death And the word was nigger And the word was death to all niggers And the word was death to all life And the word was death to all peace be still The genesis was life The genesis was death In the genesis of death Was the genesis of war be still peace be still In the name of peace They waged the wars ain’t they got no shame In the name of peace Lot’s wife is now a product of the Morton company nah, they ain’t got no shame Noah packing his wife and kiddies up for a holiday row row row your boat But why’d you leave the unicorns, noah Huh? why’d you leave them While our Black Madonna stood there Eighteen feet high holding Him in her arms Listening to the rumblings of peace be still be still CAN I GET A WITNESS? WITNESS? WITNESS? He wanted to know And peter only asked who is that dude? Who is that Black dude? Looks like a troublemaker to me And the foundations of the mighty mighty Ro Man Cat holic church were laid hallelujah Jesus nah, they ain’t got no shame Cause they killed the Carthaginians in the great appian way And they killed the Moors “to civilize a nation” And they just killed the earth And blew out the sun In the name of a god Whose genesis was white And war wooed god And america was born Where war became peace And genocide patriotism And honor is a happy slave cause all god’s chillun need rhythm And glory hallelujah why can’t peace be still The great emancipator was a bigot ain’t they got no shame And making the world safe for democracy Were twenty millon slaves nah, they ain’t got no shame And they barbecued six million To raise the price of beef And crossed the 38th parallel To control the price of rice ain’t we never gonna see the light And champagne was shipped out of the East While kosher pork was introduced To Africa Only the torch can show the way In the beginning was the deed And the deed was death And the honkies are getting confused peace be still So the great white prince Was shot like a nigger in texas And our Black shining prince was murdered like that thug in his cathedral While our nigger in memphis was shot like their prince in dallas And my lord ain’t we never gonna see the light The rumblings of this peace must be stilled be stilled be still ahh Black people ain’t we got no pride?

The great sea frees me, moves me, as a strong river carries a weed. Earth and her strong winds move me, take me away, and my soul is swept up in joy.

This is a poem about the great ships that wandered the oceans And groaned sometimes in deep voices, grumbling about fog and submerged peaks, But usually they sliced the pages of tropical seas in silence, Divided by height, category, and class, just like our communities and hotels. Beneath the deck poor emigrants played cards, and no one won While on the highest deck Claudel gazed at Ysé and her hair glowed. And toasts were raised to a safe trip, to coming times, Toasts were raised, Alsatian wine and champagne from France's finest vineyards, Some days were static, windless, when only the light seeped steadily, Days when nothing happened but the horizon, which traveled with the ship, Days of emptiness and boredom, playing solitaire, repeating the latest news, Who'd been seen with whom in a tropical night's shade, embracing beneath a peach-colored moon. But filthy stokers tirelessly tossed coal into open flaming mouths And everything that is now already existed then, but in condensed form. Our days already existed and our hearts baked in the blazing stove, And the moment when I met you may also have existed, and my mistrust Brittle as a faience plate, and my faith, no less frail and capricious, And my searches for the final answer, my disappointments and discoveries. Great ships: some sunk suddenly, arousing consciences and fear, Gaining deathless fame, becoming stars of special bulletins. Others went peacefully, waned without a word in provincial ports, in dockyards, Beneath a coat of rust, a ruddy fur of rust, a slipcover of rust, and waited For the final transformation, the last judgment of souls and objects, They wait as patiently as chess players in Luxembourg Garden nudging pieces a fraction of an inch or so.

Dentists continue to water their lawns even in the rain: Hands developed with terrible labor by apes Hang from the sleeves of evangelists; There are murdered kings in the light-bulbs outside movie theaters: The coffins of the poor are hibernating in piles of new tires. The janitor sits troubled by the boiler, And the hotel keeper shuffles the cards of insanity. The President dreams of invading Cuba. Bushes are growing over the outdoor grills, Vines over the yachts and the leather seats. The city broods over ash cans and darkening mortar. On the far shore, at Coney Island, dark children Playing on the chilling beach: a sprig of black seaweed, Shells, a skyful of birds, While the mayor sits with his head in his hands.

She recognizes its crest in the way he looks at her. The wave is as vast as the roiling mass in the Japanese Print they had paused in front of at the museum, Capped with ringlets of foam, all surging sinew. That little village along the shore would be Totally lost. There is no escaping this. The wave is flooding his heart, And he is sending the flood Her way. It rushes Over her. Can you look at one face For the whole of a life? Does the moon peer down At the tides and hunger for home?

My soul and I went to the great sea to bathe.  And when we reached the shore, we went about looking for a hidden and lonely place. But as we walked, we saw a man sitting on a grey rock taking pinches of salt from a bag and throwing them into the sea. “This is the pessimist,” said my soul, “Let us leave this place. We cannot bathe here.” We walked on until we reached an inlet.  There we saw, standing on a white rock, a man holding a bejeweled box, from which he took sugar and threw it into the sea. “And this is the optimist,” said my soul, “And he too must not see our naked bodies.” Further on we walked.  And on a beach we saw a man picking up dead fish and tenderly putting them back into the water. “And we cannot bathe before him,” said my soul.  “He is the humane philanthropist.” And we passed on. Then we came where we saw a man tracing his shadow on the sand. Great waves came and erased it.  But he went on tracing it again and again. “He is the mystic,” said my soul, “Let us leave him.” And we walked on, till in a quiet cover we saw a man scooping up the foam and putting it into an alabaster bowl. “He is the idealist,” said my soul, “Surely he must not see our nudity.” And on we walked.  Suddenly we heard a voice crying, “This is the sea.  This is the deep sea.  This is the vast and mighty sea.” And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur. And my soul said, “Let us pass on.  He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment.” So we passed on.  And in a weedy place among the rocks was a man with his head buried in the sand.  And I said to my soul, “We can bath here, for he cannot see us.” “Nay,” said my soul, “For he is the most deadly of them all.  He is the puritan.” Then a great sadness came over the face of my soul, and into her voice. “Let us go hence,” she said, “For there is no lonely, hidden place where we can bathe.  I would not have this wind lift my golden hair, or bare my white bosom in this air, or let the light disclose my sacred nakedness.” Then we left that sea to seek the Greater Sea.

Some say it’s in the reptilian dance of the purple-tongued sand goanna, for there the magnificent translation of tenacity into bone and grace occurs. And some declare it to be an expansive desert—solid rust-orange rock like dusk captured on earth in stone— simply for the perfect contrast it provides to the blue-grey ridge of rain in the distant hills. Some claim the harmonics of shifting electron rings to be most rare and some the complex motion of seven sandpipers bisecting the arcs and pitches of come and retreat over the mounting hayfield. Others, for grandeur, choose the terror of lightning peals on prairies or the tall collapsing cathedrals of stormy seas, because there they feel dwarfed and appropriately helpless; others select the serenity of that ceiling/cellar of stars they see at night on placid lakes, because there they feel assured and universally magnanimous. But it is the dark emptiness contained in every next moment that seems to me the most singularly glorious gift, that void which one is free to fill with processions of men bearing burning cedar knots or with parades of blue horses, belled and ribboned and stepping sideways, with tumbling white-faced mimes or companies of black-robed choristers; to fill simply with hammered silver teapots or kiln-dried crockery, tangerine and almond custards, polonaises, polkas, whittling sticks, wailing walls; that space large enough to hold all invented blasphemies and pieties, 10,000 definitions of god and more, never fully filled, never.

She is sixty. She lives the greatest love of her life. She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one, her hair streams in the wind. Her dear one says: “You have hair like pearls.” Her children say: “Old fool.”

My ocean town struggles to pick up leaves, offer summer school, and keep our library open. Every day now more men stand at the railroad station, waiting to be chosen for work. Because it’s thought the Hispanics will work for less they get picked first, while the whites and blacks avoid the terror in one another’s eyes. Our handyman, Santos, who expects only what his hands earn, is proud of   his half acre in Guatemala, where he plans to retire. His desire to proceed with dignity is admirable, but he knows that now no one retires, everyone works harder. My father imagined a life more satisfying than the one he managed to lead. He didn’t see himself as uneducated, thwarted, or bitter, but soon-to-be rich. Being rich was his right, he believed. Happiness, I used to think, was a necessary illusion. Now I think it’s just precious moments of relief, like dreams of Guatemala. Sometimes, at night, in winter, surrounded by the significant silence of empty mansions, which once were cottages, where people lived their lives, and now are owned by banks and the absent rich, I like to stand at my window, looking for a tv ’s futile flickering, always surprised to see instead the quaint, porous face of my reflection, immersed in its one abundance.