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“Who is Apollo?” College student How shall a generation know its story If it will know no other? When, among The scoffers at the Institute, Pasteur Heard one deny the cause of child-birth fever, Indignantly he drew upon the blackboard, For all to see, the Streptococcus chain. His mind was like Odysseus and Plato Exploring a new cosmos in the old As if he wrote a poem—his enemy Suffering, disease, and death, the battleground His introspection. “Science and peace,” he said, “Will win out over ignorance and war,” But then, the virus mutant in his vein, “Death to the Prussian!” and “revenge, revenge!” How shall my generation tell its story? Their fathers jobless, boys for the CCC And NYA , the future like a stairwell To floors without a window or a door, And then the army: bayonet drill and foxhole; Bombing to rubble cities with textbook names Later to bulldoze streets for; their green bodies Drowned in the greener surfs of rumored France. My childhood friend, George Humphreys, whom I still see Still ten years old, his uncombed hair and grin Moment by moment in the Hürtgen dark Until the one step full in the sniper’s sight, His pastor father emptied by the grief. Clark Harrison, at nineteen a survivor, Never to walk or have a child or be A senator or governor. Herr Wegner, Who led his little troop, their standards high And sabers drawn, against a panzer corps, Emerging from among the shades at Dachau Stacked like firewood for someone else to burn; And Gerd Radomski, listening to broadcasts Of names, a yearlong babel of the missing, To find his wife and children. Then they came home, Near middle age at twenty-two, to find A new reunion of the church and state, Cynical Constantines who need no name, Domestic tranquility beaten to a sword, Sons wasted by another lie in Asia, Or Strangeloves they had feared that August day; And they like runners, stung, behind a flag, Running within a circle, bereft of joy. Hearing of the disaster at Sedan And the retreat worse than the one from Moscow, Their son among the missing or the dead, Pasteur and his wife Mary hired a carriage And, traveling to the east where he might try His way to Paris, stopping to ask each youth And comfort every orphan of the state’s Irascibility, found him at last And, unsurprised, embraced and took him in. Two wars later, the Prussian, once again The son of Mars, in Paris, Joseph Meister— The first boy cured of rabies, now the keeper Of Pasteur’s mausoleum—when commanded To open it for them, though over seventy, Lest he betray the master, took his life. I like to think of Pasteur in Elysium Beneath the sunny pine of ripe Provence Tenderly raising black sheep, butterflies, Silkworms, and a new culture, for delight, Teaching his daughter to use a microscope And musing through a wonder—sacred passion, Practice and metaphysic all the same. And, each year, honor three births: Valéry, Humbling his pride by trying to write well, Mozart, who lives still, keeping my attention Repeatedly outside the reach of pride, And him whose mark I witness as a trust. Others he saves but could not save himself— Socrates, Galen, Hippocrates—the spirit Fastened by love upon the human cross.

for Bobbie Yesterday I wanted to speak of it, that sense above the others to me important because all that I know derives from what it teaches me. Today, what is it that is finally so helpless, different, despairs of its own statement, wants to turn away, endlessly to turn away. If the moon did not ... no, if you did not I wouldn’t either, but what would I not do, what prevention, what thing so quickly stopped. That is love yesterday or tomorrow, not now. Can I eat what you give me. I have not earned it. Must I think of everything as earned. Now love also becomes a reward so remote from me I have only made it with my mind. Here is tedium, despair, a painful sense of isolation and whimsical if pompous self-regard. But that image is only of the mind’s vague structure, vague to me because it is my own. Love, what do I think to say. I cannot say it. What have you become to ask, what have I made you into, companion, good company, crossed legs with skirt, or soft body under the bones of the bed. Nothing says anything but that which it wishes would come true, fears what else might happen in some other place, some other time not this one. A voice in my place, an echo of that only in yours. Let me stumble into not the confession but the obsession I begin with now. For you also (also) some time beyond place, or place beyond time, no mind left to say anything at all, that face gone, now. Into the company of love it all returns.

Compose for Red a proper verse; Adhere to foot and strict iamb; Control the burst of angry words Or they might boil and break the dam. Or they might boil and overflow And drench me, drown me, drive me mad. So swear no oath, so shed no tear, And sing no song blue Baptist sad. Evoke no image, stir no flame, And spin no yarn across the air. Make empty anglo tea lace words— Make them dead white and dry bone bare. Compose a verse for Malcolm man, And make it rime and make it prim. The verse will die—as all men do— but not the memory of him! Death might come singing sweet like C, Or knocking like the old folk say, The moon and stars may pass away, But not the anger of that day.

All you violated ones with gentle hearts; You violent dreamers whose cries shout heartbreak; Whose voices echo clamors of our cool capers, And whose black faces have hollowed pits for eyes. All you gambling sons and hooked children and bowery bums Hating white devils and black bourgeoisie, Thumbing your noses at your burning red suns, Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan. Snow-white moslem head-dress around a dead black face! Beautiful were your sand-papering words against our skins! Our blood and water pour from your flowing wounds. You have cut open our breasts and dug scalpels in our brains. When and Where will another come to take your holy place? Old man mumbling in his dotage, crying child, unborn?

It is not poetry you fear, but poets, their indelible brand of words. How will your daughter escape the mark men hanged young women for in Salem? I am nothing more than a teacher, like you. See, I have removed my shoes and socks. I am rolling my trousers above my ankles. No cloven hooves. Long feet and toes like you and your beautiful daughter. It is language that has won her over, earth-bound words walking orderly across the page like children holding to the rope attached to your wrist, teacher and students traversing the noisy street at the crosswalk, with the light of your fingers composing the line your children read, each syllable's afterimage trailing your quick passage of hands conducting the boys and girls safely from one curb to the other.

How time reverses The proud in heart! I now make verses Who aimed at art. But I sleep well. Ambitious boys Whose big lines swell With spiritual noise, Despise me not! And be not queasy To praise somewhat: Verse is not easy. But rage who will. Time that procured me Good sense and skill Of madness cured me.

I love her fierceness when she fights me, shouting "Not fair!" Her eyes slitting like shutters in cities by the sea. Her life is rife with bonfires—seen and unseen— fires that burn through the turning years bringing her to life again, and again, in a miracle of smoke. This heat gives her a sense of forgiveness—or so I imagine— she kisses my back, capriciously, when I scold her. Maybe she recalls the scalpel by which she was born. Easy, the mark of its slash in my skin. She rose from my belly as I slept. We're bound together by peace, no shrieks of pain, and my modesty. We're a canvas by Giovanni Bellini: a virgin and a sweet rabbit.

Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read Beneath the innocence of morning flesh Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed. Coldest of winds have blown this hair, and mesh Of seaweed snarled these miniatures of hands; The night’s slow poison, tolerant and bland, Has moved her blood. Parched years that I have seen That may be hers appear: foul, lingering Death in certain war, the slim legs green. Or, fed on hate, she relishes the sting Of others’ agony; perhaps the cruel Bride of a syphilitic or a fool. These speculations sour in the sun. I have no daughter. I desire none.

Mid-May, centipedes looped over netting at the well's mouth. Girls grew frisky in summer frocks, lilies spotted with blood. You were bound to meteorology, Science of fickle clouds, ferocious winds. The day you turned twenty-six fighter planes cut a storm, Fissured air baring the heart's intricate meshwork Of want and need— Springs of cirrus out of which sap and shoot you raised me. Crossing Chand Bibi Road, Named after the princess who rode with hawks, Slept with a gold sword under her pillow, Raced on polo fields, You saw a man lift a child, her chest burnt with oil, Her small thighs bruised. He bore her through latticed hallways Into Lady Dufferin's hospital. How could you pierce the acumen of empire, Mesh of deceprion through which soldiers crawled, Trees slashed with petrol, Grille work of light in a partitioned land? When you turned away, Your blue black hair was crowned with smoke— You knelt on a stone. On your bent head The monsoons poured.

Nothing better for people than dogs nothing better than ma king you scream here. There were two super new cars and then some pink chicken filets I guess there were berries for sale in Scandinavia a man in a plaid shirt & cookies also they are working in the ceme tery I can see their blue ladder from here. A man has written a book about many deaths or many things to do after. Read it read it they say but what comes after is a small idea. Now is large rainy. Amy I wish you luck