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The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on, Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home. The heart of a woman falls back with the night, And enters some alien cage in its plight, And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

The grasses in the field have toppled, and in places it seems that a large, now absent, animal must have passed the night. The hay will right itself if the day turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully. None of your blustering entrances or exits, doors swinging wildly on their hinges, or your huge unconscious sighs when you read something sad, like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan, where he traveled after Clover died. Everything blooming bows down in the rain: white irises, red peonies; and the poppies with their black and secret centers lie shattered on the lawn.

All Greece hates the still eyes in the white face, the lustre as of olives where she stands, and the white hands. All Greece reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it deeper still when it grows wan and white, remembering past enchantments and past ills. Greece sees unmoved, God’s daughter, born of love, the beauty of cool feet and slenderest knees, could love indeed the maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid funereal cypresses.

The helicopter, a sort of controlled silver leaf dropped lightly into the clearing. The searchlights swung, the little girl, the little girl was crying, her mother, a girl herself, was giving birth, the forest dropped birdseeds of milk. Then the helicopter lifted away, the mother rested. Like him who came to us empty-handed, who came, it seemed, with nothing, Joseph Cornell—          making a shoebox universe to put it all in.

The sound of a guitar drifts through the air. Cupped in my hand, a snowflake quivers lightly. Thick patches of fog draw back to reveal A mountain range, rolling like a melody. I have gathered the inheritance of the four seasons. There is no sign of man in the valley. Picked wild flowers continue to grow, Their flowering is their time of death. Along the path in the primordial wood Green sunlight flows through the slits. A russet hawk interprets into bird cries The mountain's tale of terror. Abruptly I cry out, "Hello, Bai—hua—Mountain." "Hello, my—child," comes the echo From a distant waterfall. It was a wind within a wind, drawing A restless response from the land, I whispered, and the snowflake Drifted from my hand down the abyss.

Remember me: the murmuring lips half said in half-light, buried in the hollow a boy’s neck made, as now inside his head they stir again, though twenty years swallow the purest parts of her, all but her plea, this taunt—what act from him could it command? The boy who’d know is gone—Re-member me— but what man can assemble limbs, make stand again those legs that twined in his, or hitch the yoke of hips to sway and resurrect a girl? I try, but only recollect her scar—each lewd, profaning, cautered stitch— vermiform, red, furrowed belly to breast: where nights, long past, he’d laid his head in rest.

I'm herdsman of a flock. The sheep are my thoughts And my thoughts are all sensations. I think with my eyes and my ears And my hands and feet And nostrils and mouth. To think a flower is to see and smell it. To eat a fruit is to sense its savor. And that is why, when I feel sad, In a day of heat, because of so much joy And lay me down in the grass to rest And close my sun-warmed eyes, I feel my whole body relaxed in reality And know the whole truth and am happy.

Ghost I house In this old flat— Your outpost— My aftermath

All winter she’s been growing more powerful. Radiant, says the man at the bar. Voluptuous, says the docent. Nervy, says God. All winter her soul has been juddering. It feels like drinking gold flakes! The word sleeps inside the stone. The wind tongues the underside of the lake. Inside the rifle scope of time, God teaches her Grounding Techniques through his emissary, a Certified Therapist. Beetles bore their dirty traffic into pine trees. God says, You cling to deixis like a life raft.Here, you say.Now, you say.All winter, you say, like it means something, days crossed off your compulsive calendar, wind tied to your wrist like a pet. This dumb hunger for fixity! I made your cells to shed, says God. See them everywhere, everywhere. She bites her lip till it bleeds. Who wouldn’t immanentize the eschaton, if they could, build heaven on earth in the backyard? She wouldn’t, is who. Day a slit-throated ewe. She wears a prayer around her neck in another language, no clue what it says. Who will translate the prayer? Listen: she loved a happy libertine and thought that was heaven. To ground herself she strips berries from the juniper bushes. Well, says God, Alexander the Great dyed his hair saffron. We are all made fools in this world.

24. Zachary talks about wanting to be with someone because he feels like he can be a better person for someone else. He says he doesn't know what he's doing, wishes he had someone to do things for. I tell him I think we are very different people. Theory as pure verbalism: a generated knowledge with negative impact. If I begin to miss someone,  I think, "Life is bad anyway."