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The neighborhood cringes behind windows washed in magnesium light, streamers fizzling above the shingled rooftop of the apartments across the street where teenaged boys with mannish arms throw cherry bombs, bottle rockets, wings and spinners, snappers, chasers, fiery cryolite wheels onto the avenue. Paint flakes off the flammable houses and onto brave square plots of white grass. Rain-deprived vines sucker the shutters. Backyard dogs tear at the dirt, cats run flat out, their tails straight up. What's liberty to the checkout girl selling smokes and nuts, greenbacks turning her fingers to grease? The boys insist on pursuing happiness, their birthright: a box of matches, crackers on strings, sparklers, fountains, missiles, repeating shells, Roman candles, Brazilian barrages. We peek through blind slats to where they stand around a manhole cover, the gold foam of Corona bottles breaking at their feet, young up-turned faces lit by large caliber multi-shot aerials. We suffer each concussion, the sulfer rush that smells like fear, each dizzy, orgiastic display that says we love this country, democracy, the right to a speedy trial. We're afraid to complain, to cross the spent red casings melted on asphalt in the morning's stunned aftermath, to knock hard on any door, and find them draped like dead men over the couches, the floor, hands clasped behind their heads prison style, shoulders tattooed, dreaming the dreams of free men in summer, shirts off, holes in their jeans.

I remember a performance of Antigone in which she threw herself on the floor of the universe and picked up a piece of dust. Is that the particle? It startled me. Was it Scripted? Directed? Driven? I am a girl, Antigone. I have a sister. We love each other terribly. I am a woman of property. The milk of the footlights. The folds of the curtain. I remember a performance of Antigone. She stooped. There was a wild particle. It was glorified by my distance. I heard the hooves of the dust. The ticking of the script calibrating oblivion. I saw the particle hanging and Antigone needed something to do with her hands and she did it.

I Under the makeshift arbor of leaves a hot wind blowing smoke and laughter. Music out of the renegade west, too harsh and loud, many dark faces moved among the sweating whites. II Wandering apart from the others, I found an old Indian seated alone on a bench in the flickering shade. He was holding a dented bucket; three crayfish, lifting themselves from the muddy water, stirred and scraped against the greasy metal. III The old man stared from his wrinkled darkness across the celebration, unblinking, as one might see in the hooded sleep of turtles. A smile out of the ages of gold and carbon flashed upon his face and vanished, called away by the sound and the glare around him, by the lost voice of a child piercing that thronged solitude. IV The afternoon gathered distance and depth, divided in the shadows that broke and moved upon us . . . Slowly, too slowly, as if returned from a long and difficult journey, the old man lifted his bucket and walked away into the sunlit crowd. (1972-76)

Only joy, now here you are, Fit to hear and ease my care; Let my whispering voice obtain, Sweet reward for sharpest pain; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Night hath closed all in her cloak, Twinkling stars love-thoughts provoke: Danger hence good care doth keep, Jealousy itself doth sleep; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Better place no wit can find, Cupid’s yoke to loose or bind: These sweet flowers on fine bed too, Us in their best language woo; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. This small light the moon bestows, Serves thy beams but to disclose, So to raise my hap more high; Fear not else, none can us spy: Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. That you heard was but a mouse, Dumb sleep holdeth all the house; Yet asleep, methinks they say, Young folks, take time while you may: Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Niggard Time threats, if we miss This large offer of our bliss, Long stay ere he grant the same; Sweet then, while each thing doth frame, Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Your fair mother is abed, Candles out, and curtains spread: She thinks you do letters write. Write, but first let me indite: Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Sweet, alas, why strive you thus? Concord better fitteth us: Leave to Mars the force of hands, Your power in your beauty stands; Take me to thee, and thee to me. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be. Woe to me, and do you swear Me to hate, but I forbear, Cursèd by my destines all That brought me so high to fall: Soon with my death I will please thee. No, no, no, no, my dear, let be.

Foweles in the frith, The fisses in the flod, And I mon waxe wod; Mulch sorwe I walke with For best of bon and blod.

The girl from Scarborough liked being slapped Down the hall from where her mother slept. A big, hard-working hand, anybody’s To come medicinally down, antibody To the slow infection of   her Western face (what sucked the most was that it wasn’t fast). Some birds don’t migrate. Above, two lonely fowl Scream across the sky their only vowel. This river I step in is not the river I stand in. We’ll drive to Leslieville, wherever, Park in the Guildwood GO lot and get stoned. Who’s there? Nay, answer me. Stand And unfold yourself. Her heart begins to pound. No geese go winging to the rooky pond No goslings disappear their small and speckled. If we endure this, it will make us special.

She knew what she was and so was capable of anything anyone could imagine. She loved what she was, there for the taking, imagine. She imagined nothing. She loved nothing more than what she had, which was enough for her, which was more than any man could handle.

I heard a cough as if a thief was there outside my sleep a sharp intake of air a fox in her fox-fur stepping across the grass in her black gloves barked at my house just so abrupt and odd the way she went hungrily asking in the heart's thick accent in such serious sleepless trespass she came a woman with a man's voice but no name as if to say: it's midnight and my life is laid beneath my children like gold leaf

The kiss is, strictly speaking, a passing of of twice: a bead from her mouth to his, then back, ad nauseam, and the boys who lived and died for it. The lovely girl amassing ninety-nine spirits, and in high spirits for consuming her highest amount. Once the hundredth boy arrived she starts her hunt in her haunt, a hill’s field filled with fitting Artemisia absinthium.

Tulip, you Bled on my green rug. A jungle-red petal Where my little kits Rollick, fallen like a warning— Yesterday I sat outside In the returned sun Trying to make more Friends; after all these years To think of yourself Snapped, the sweet sap Tremoring between States of ice and melt. An old love wrote to me From his wife’s country place To say he had been hunting there And could appreciate the hounds; In a white coat he is closely Setting people’s bones, opening Their backs with the hands I knew The cancellated paths Of saying no or yes: I could have fallen To a fearing of the little foxes lately Come into the yard (There is so little I know about what to do) But I let them be.