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Thank Heaven! the crisis, The danger, is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last— And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last. Sadly, I know I am shorn of my strength, And no muscle I move As I lie at full length— But no matter!—I feel I am better at length. And I rest so composedly, Now, in my bed, That any beholder Might fancy me dead— Might start at beholding me, Thinking me dead. The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called "Living" That burned in my brain. And oh! of all tortures That torture the worst Has abated—the terrible Torture of thirst For the naphthaline river Of Passion accurst:— I have drank of a water That quenches all thirst:— Of a water that flows, With a lullaby sound, From a spring but a very few Feet under ground— From a cavern not very far Down under ground. And ah! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy And narrow my bed; For man never slept In a different bed— And, to sleep , you must slumber In just such a bed. My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting, its roses— Its old agitations Of myrtles and roses: For now, while so quietly Lying, it fancies A holier odor About it, of pansies— A rosemary odor, Commingled with pansies— With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies. And so it lies happily, Bathing in many A dream of the truth And the beauty of Annie— Drowned in a bath Of the tresses of Annie. She tenderly kissed me, She fondly caressed, And then I fell gently To sleep on her breast— Deeply to sleep From the heaven of her breast. When the light was extinguished, She covered me warm, And she prayed to the angels To keep me from harm— To the queen of the angels To shield me from harm. And I lie so composedly, Now, in my bed, (Knowing her love) That you fancy me dead— And I rest so contentedly, Now in my bed (With her love at my breast). That you fancy me dead— That you shudder to look at me, Thinking me dead:— But my heart it is brighter Than all of the many Stars in the sky, For it sparkles with Annie— It glows with the light Of the love of my Annie— With the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie.

where do his eyes go when he plays ballads? higher than smoke fogging the room, cymbals which rustle god’s earlobes like kisses. a friend swears there is a skylight in his hat where notes gather before plunging toward the bell of his tenor, while ben gazes longingly up the skirts of stars.

After the clash of elevator gates And the long sinking, she emerges where, A slight thing in the morning’s crosstown glare, She looks up toward the window where he waits, Then in a fleeting taxi joins the rest Of the huge traffic bound forever west. On such grand scale do lovers say good-bye— Even this other pair whose high romance Had only the duration of a dance, And who, now taking leave with stricken eye, See each in each a whole new life forgone. For them, above the darkling clubhouse lawn, Bright Perseids flash and crumble; while for these Who part now on the dock, weighed down by grief And baggage, yet with something like relief, It takes three thousand miles of knitting seas To cancel out their crossing, and unmake The amorous rough and tumble of their wake. We are denied, my love, their fine tristesse And bittersweet regrets, and cannot share The frequent vistas of their large despair, Where love and all are swept to nothingness; Still, there’s a certain scope in that long love Which constant spirits are the keepers of, And which, though taken to be tame and staid, Is a wild sostenuto of the heart, A passion joined to courtesy and art Which has the quality of something made, Like a good fiddle, like the rose’s scent, Like a rose window or the firmament.

as the early morning light reflected off leaves against my window I called you to say I was moving back and I cried so deeply the way I cried for weeks after I moved losing my breath hovering between waking and sleep on the day I left I stood on your balcony facing the Pacific Ocean watching the sea stretch past a gauze of power lines into a green horizon this summer I began to awaken with my body covered in a cold sweat a whippoorwill calling from beyond the ramshackle fence kept me calm through the darkness and earlier this spring my dear friend Charlie had mysteriously died and like so many secrets we shared he loved to tan turning a tone the color of a young Toni Tennille he loved to dance he loved to pray every night I lie and recite the Act of Contrition to settle my head I am sorry for my sins with all my heart in choosing to do wrong and failing to do good I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things and almost every night I’ve dreamt of Charlie reading by candlelight he is old his skin sags like the arms of a tulip tree how easy it is to listen to his voice I cradle my chin into his neck our beards brush together now as you answer the phone I hear the discordant steam of cargo ships murmur in the distance there is no reason to lie to you I have been dying since we met

Hark, how all the welkin rings, “Glory to the King of kings; Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconcil’d!” Joyful, all ye nations, rise, Join the triumph of the skies; Universal nature say, “Christ the Lord is born to-day!” Christ, by highest Heaven ador’d, Christ, the everlasting Lord: Late in time behold him come, Offspring of a virgin’s womb! Veil’d in flesh, the Godhead see, Hail th’ incarnate Deity! Pleas’d as man with men to appear, Jesus, our Immanuel here! Hail, the heavenly Prince of Peace, Hail, the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, Risen with healing in his wings. Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth; Born to give them second birth. Come, desire of nations, come, Fix in us thy humble home; Rise, the woman’s conquering seed, Bruise in us the serpent’s head. Now display thy saving power, Ruin’d nature now restore; Now in mystic union join Thine to ours, and ours to thine. Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface, Stamp thy image in its place. Second Adam from above, Reinstate us in thy love. Let us thee, though lost, regain, Thee, the life, the inner man: O, to all thyself impart, Form’d in each believing heart.

Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King, Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinner reconcil’d. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Joyful all ye nations rise, Join the triumph of the skies, With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Christ by highest Heaven ador’d, Christ the everlasting Lord! Late in time behold him come, Offspring of a virgin’s womb. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail, the incarnate Deity, Pleased as Man with man to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel! Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all he brings, Risen with healing in his wings. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King. Mild he lays his glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth. Hark! the herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King.

Lonnie didn’t want to eat with Clifford. I tried to keep my eyes away from his mouth, Which opened uncontrollably, His thick saliva oozing over him. And he couldn’t talk. So I ate my lunch with Lonnie, heard him talk About the dive which broke his neck, about His motorcycle shop in Chico, while Another nurse gave Clifford lunch. Every day His parents came to push his chair around The grounds. A grim, determined pair; I wondered what disasters they had seen. The nurses talked with them about Their son. His eyes are beautiful, they said. One day a nurse who put her stethoscope To Clifford’s chest could not detect a beat. “His heart has stopped,” she said in quiet awe. The P.A. speakers cried: CODE BLUE, C-2, STAT! CODE BLUE, C-2, STAT! The doctors, nurses and technicians ran Into our crowded room. The squeaking Crash cart could not be heard above The urgent, human sounds the doctors made: A swirl of orders filled the air. “I need The mallet quick, goddamnit, QUICK, I said!” Encapsulated in my iron lung, I noted that doctors weren’t the calm Professionals portrayed by Robert Young And Richard Chamberlain, but people just As scared of death as everybody else. Then, they took me, iron lung and all, And parked me in a room Where women patients spend their lives. The room was quiet as a stone; no clocks Or television sets marked the time, Which passed as slowly as Moses climbing Mount Sinai, Until the social worker, Mrs. Mintzer, Came to talk to me about Shakespeare. All his tragedies, She said, contain a point where things begin To fall apart. The bold protagonist, No matter what his cunning, skill or strength, Can see his fall foreshadowed by a small Event. Macbeth saw Banquo at the feast And after that it went from bad to worse Until the murd’rous thane became a corpse Without a head. She paused to think a while. Now Clifford led a fairly normal life, She pointed out, despite his cerebral palsy. Playing cards and camping with his family Were not beyond his reach. The point where things fell apart occurred Five years ago, when he fell and broke His shoulder bone. “Clifford died,” she said. And tried to comfort me with her sympathy For my awful loss. I didn’t mourn his death at all. “Too bad he died so young,” I said, At twenty-three.” But all I cared about Was the space in my crowded room. The p.m. nurses took me back into my room. I asked one to play my tape, Appalachian Spring. She reached into my bedside stand and slipped. “There’s blood all over the floor, Clifford’s. I thought they’d cleaned up all that mess.” I spent the weekend after that in the solarium. I read and overheard the nurses in the next room. “They say he wrote exquisite poetry About the way he felt when people stared At him as if he were a freak.” And so I learned of my insensitivity, Insensitivity so great I failed To recognize a person Caught in much the same predicament as I. Such numbness isolates me more Than any iron lung.

Freely beside me the vineyards are running and unbridled Remains the sky. Wildfires trade pinecones and one Donkey bolts uphill for a little cloud St. Heracleitos’s day and something’s up That even noses can’t diagnose: Tricks of a shoeless wind snagging the hem Of Fate’s nightgown and leaving Us in the open air of capricorns exposed Secretly I go with all the loot in my mind For a life unbowed from the beginning. No candles no chandeliers Only a gold anemone’s engagement for a diamond Feeling its way to where? Asking what? Our moon’s half- shadow needs You to console even the graves Homoethnic or not. The crux is that the scent of earth Lost even to bloodhounds With its weeds onions and creeks Must be restored to its idiom So what! A word contains you peasant of night’s green Efessos! Forefather sulphur phosphorus your fourteenth generation Inside the orange groves gold words Sharing the scalpel’s chisel Tents as yet unpitched others midair Lost poles suddenly grinding. Sermons Rise from the seafloor of the facing coves Twin scythes for theater or temple Fresh valley springs and other curly streams Of thus and so. If ever wisdom Planned circles of clover and dog grass Another world might live just as before your fingerprint Letters will exist. People will read and grab History’s tail once more. Just let the vineyards gallop and the sky remain Unbridled as children want it With roosters and pinecones and blue kites flags On Saint Heracleitos’s day child’s is the kingdom.

I wore Grandma Liz's pearls for play, a plastic strand long enough to pool on the carpet over my stubbed toes. When I pull them over my head now, I smell phantoms: cigarettes, Esteé Lauder. I don't smoke or spritz on perfume. I don't layer polyester or perm my hair. I've slipped off my wedding ring as she did, signed divorce. What advice would she offer for life between husbands?Wear red lipstick and always leave it behind.

Such a long time as the wave idling gathers lofts and presses forward into the curvature of the height before one realizes that the tension completes itself with a fall through air, disorganization the prelude to the meandering of another gather and hurl, the necessary: ah, what can one make to absorb the astonishment: you should have seen me the merchant at market this morning: the people ogled me with severe goggles: maids, buying in manners and measures beyond themselves, stared into my goods and then grew horror-eyed: wives still as distant from day as a carrot from dinner took the misconnection sagely, a usual patience: peashells, I said, long silky peashells: cobs, I said, long cobs: husks and shucks, I said: one concerned person pointed out that my whole economy was wrong; yes, I said, but I have nothing else to sell: and I said to her, won't you appreciate the silky beds where seeds have lain: she had not come to that: and how about this residence all the grains have left: won't you buy it and think about it: not for dinner, she said: rinds, I cried, rinds and peelings: there was some interest in those, as for a marmalade, but no one willing, finally, to do the preparations: absurd, one woman shouted, and then I grew serious: can you do with that: but she was off before we fully met: you should have seen me the merchant at market this morning: will bankruptcy make a go of it: will the leavings be left only: the wave turns over and does not rise again, that wave.