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Large green-tailed lizard, zucchini-mottled flicks and swirls. But, no! It’s not some random lizard: that’s the snake! A rill of water falling up the stone, he’d heard my light, quick foot     as human-hard. And the dream? that wildly handsome man who had no wife,     his wife had “gone away” (but where?)     so he wanted to meet more     women he needed help    with his decor, his place was encumbered with little ceramic, clay- kitsch banalities —      I did not see the snake’s head, since it faced away.     I could not fix it being vipera or serpente. That question hinged on poison in his mix. From what I saw, though, ’twas a very handsome snake. • Options: “scaled to the human boy” or was it “scaled to the human body”? Which did I write? Options: Desire? temptation? yearning for danger? thralldom? lust? You can add to the list yourself. You can add yourself to the list. Options: Teasing enchantment. “How still the Riddle lies.” Options: Insistent     “Shaft”     “a tighter Breathing” The sibyl’s many leaves are laurel made for wreathing.

i thees wite skirtes / & orang sweters     / i wont / inn the feedynge marte / wile mye vegetable partes bloome / inn the commen waye /   a grackel inn the guarden rooste /    the tall wymon wasching handes / or eyeing turnups / the sadened powres wee rub /             so economicalie / inn 1 virsion off thynges / alarum is mye nayme / unkempt & handeld i am hors / i am sadeld /      i am a brokn hors ii the bit provydes its hors / the rocke provyded a boye blessynge gode / i wantd 1 secrete but fore the rod inn this / mye longish throte / i kno no new waye / 2 speech this / the powre off lyons iii tonite i wuld luv to rite the mothe inn the guarden / 2  greev   it   /   &   as   a   mater   off  forme  /   did   u   kno  not a monthe goes bye  /  a tran i kno doesnt dye  /  just  shye   off   27   /   its   such   a   plesure   to   b   alive   /  inn  this  trembled  soot  /  u  lent  /  shock  is  a  struktured  responce  /  a  whord  lost  inn  the  mouthe  off keepers  /  &  u thum at the mothe  /  a dozen bes  / i  tetherred  thees  nites  /  i  gathred  so  manie  treees

Childhood You came into this world trailing clouds all right, they just happened to be big black ones. In the castle you drank from a poisoned goblet and were changed into something even bears cringe at. When you awake baling-wired in thorns, viceroys around you cobwebbed to their steins, moth-eaten ermines, a muttering king— what choice do you have? Rappel down the turret with your cap and bells. Adolescence Handed a baton in a bad-luck relay, you've overshot the cliff and are pinwheeling down, flailing in time to that whistling-wind keening that lets viewers know you will soon be compressed under a subsequent sequence of rocks. Squashed into pleats a centimeter wide? Stride till you're 3-D again. Adulthood You're staggering through a dark wood, soundtrack a fugue. Remember wrens risk a hand for a single seed, orchids can sprout from duff alone. Executive Summary How many can you feed from your sourdough lumps? Each morning, braid a loaf. Give them away.

try again. so the lesson goes. less a foot. an arm. an eye. easier to lose one of two, to split a pair, to untwine. other injuries are more difficult. a broken septum, an amputated tongue. consider the spleen. once ruptured the body is maligned, capillaries flooded with something other than. the greeks considered the spleen the organ of compassion, but the french recognized melancholy, the mottled flesh, the ache of. it is not, after all, the heart but the spleen that is the source of our greatest suffering. the heart is that which we cannot live without. it must be whole, intact. if our heart breaks, truly breaks, it must be replaced. but the spleen, that abalone nestled behind, within, can be carved down to a sliver of itself. it can live on somehow, a mere fragment of. • every day dawn finds herself naked and wonders if she has not in fact lost herself entirely in the night, her clothes, precepts, selfhood. what comes of a preposition, of love, some penetrated interiority. in this new and sudden opening, there is the fragile pink of sky, the lip of wind. dawn is not alone in her discomfort. the sun too is heavy with the previous day’s misfortunes. neither can bear the tentative movement of the other. she would withdraw safely into the darkness but sun is thick limbed, blocking the door. dawn walks backward toward the window, her legs shimmering with light. she will fall — she always does — upward, into the buoyancy of it. there will be witnesses. it does not matter who. for dawn there is only the swarm of light, the heady rush of it. everything else is incidental. • there is a story we tell. a story about suffering. not because we are only suffering, but because that is the story we have been taught to tell. take a beetle for instance. it talks of nothing other than the leaf it chews. the angularity of it. the soft brush underneath. there are many beetles. far more than there are humans. somehow our voices always drown them out. take crows for instance. they have been known to fish. not with their beaks but with fiberglass poles left idle by drunken fishermen. or maybe they are just sleeping. either way the crow speaks only of fish. the cold flesh. the fragile meat. in the story i tell myself there are often buffalo. not because they are prolific, but because they occupy the expanse of my memory, its continent. the buffalo are only a metaphor. snow is also a metaphor. bodies blanketed in white. freezing. we are all rigid with it. the story. tell something different. something about the rain. the sound of it. like walking skyward. away from one’s origins. what has been culled from one atmosphere falling gently into another. • energy is an attribute of objects. we often mistake the boulder for something other than. he is drawn to the laboratory dome, a concrete formation sitting cross-legged on the mountainside. as if protesting movement. as if unmovable. he finds breathing difficult, the opening and closing. he avoids people who demand such things. there are those who objected to nuclear fission, to anything being split in two. inside the concrete building, he finds the guts of the machine, metal tentacles wrapping around the bulbous head of an octopus. he stations himself at the tentacle’s tip and measures the distance electrons travel when driven from their source. a hundred years ago scientists believed that fission could split the world into sequences of light. they were right. he scatters particles, drives elements far from their nucleus. to create such structural injury. we continue to.

I He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah. I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise. Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one’s fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea. We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth. A man of humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel, but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah. II The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship comes when one is alone. I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other are foes. It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby, “Feed me!” What is the use of saying that men are stones when I know I am going to try to turn them into bread. I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep my miserable wallet. If he says he has any goodness in him, I avoid him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock or betray us in any moment of self-esteem. I have no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me, for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity. Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not knowing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned upon me, for I shall never know who I am if I am not loved. V Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver, for it is the spirit that dies soonest. Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto’s soldiers could not ford. Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it. There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory; go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard for the preservation of your soul. People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes anywhere. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying. There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment. God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is friendship, I mistrust every mortal. Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin which is my daily bread. December 1959

2 There is no end to the torment that comes from watching dead actors in old, and no so old, movies, and you always fall into the hole of uncertainty; you know you don’t know if they’re alive or dead, some of them look so radiant on films made not so long ago. Richard Harris, the hero of The Heroes of Telemark, is undergoing a second birth in old man roles, while in the rockface rappelling, snow on castles icecapade,Where Eagles Dare, two out of three leads, Richard Burton and Mary Ure, are both quite dead, as is her second husband, Robert Shaw. A lot happens in Eagles, but what sticks in my mind is the escape, where Mary Ure, coifed, oblique glimmer of a smile, cradling a machine gun like a weightless toy on the caboose’s deck, bullets in mesmerizingly endless supply, decorously mows down row on row of Nazi pursuers, who drop into the white Alpine ridges like knocked over counters in a game, as if she were answering the blasts from Jimmy Porter’s trumpet as they merge with a shrieking train whistle and screech of brakes. 3 To St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, for Robert Shaw’s memorial service. A beautiful, still day. There was a gathering of figures from the profession, plus friends and family. Harold Pinter gave a short address, stressing Bob the writer... It was a fairly joyful occasion, serious but not sad. I had my usual bewilderment about our lack of ritual. We all huddled together in the sunshine outside the church—Paul Scofield, Kenneth Haigh, Harold, and many, many others. We all wanted to be together in Bob's memory. But what could we, un-Christian as most of us are, do? Off to the Riverside Studios to see The Changeling, beautifully staged by Peter Gill, precise and clear. But I had the impression of a not very talented cast dutifully following the conception of a quite brilliant director. —1978, Saturday 7 October, Peter Hall’s Diaries I abhor assumptions but from the tension Robert Shaw emitted on screen and in his other incarnations, the athletic boozer’s fatal heart attack in middle-age seemed at first less surprising than Mary’s Ure’s ambiguous end. Shaw looks so painfully alive in Jaws as the shark- crazed minor Ahab it’s hard to digest how quickly he raced toward a death from natural causes, so shortly afterwards. There’s much that could be said about Robert Shaw, a ubiquitous, menacing, explosive presence during the previous decade in British films before the American public began to pin a name

1 the weeds thick between sugar mill drums without batting an eye the moon strung through the smokestack’s pupil the connecting rod and piston shameless before the cane gone to seed rust scuffles with grease the toadstool atop the heap of  filings in the smoke box to be shielded from the abysmal ribbing infinite nuts to throw at the rustproof   head of the enemy Agabama spoon lunchless oxidation’s honor 2 you know by name every tool in the museum of wood within reach of the waves clamp brace brush set square boathouse in Coconut Grove withstood fourteen hurricanes like the soul transpires like the body transcends even the seagull recognizes you when you piss the sea three sheets to the wind rasp box of miter joints socket chisel the old cushionless rocking chairs rising up in pieces so you can spy on your childhood 3 they yell out but you don’t answer you’re in the yolk of a marabu patch no one looks for you where nothing can go not even the guinea hens running wild in secret you cleared a path one evening with your plaid shirt the only thing to get past the thorns is the voice of your mother meticulous like a hurricane you spread out over the dry corollas below a sky stripped of leaves by the clouds like a string of ants and you undress only for you to await the Indians 5 at the crossroads there’s a smell of mother crystallized sweat shadows in simple syrup an irrefutable knife between encrusted cans for coffee and lard there’s a taste of mother at the crossroads molasses in its light rice pudding soul a knife to cut everything but essence Peruvian guava ripened by flies the sharp destiny of a mother that can be wrapped in banana leaves 7 a dog facing a bookcase in the middle of see-through ruins the bookcase was the work of asthma there was a spot for the old oilcan the bunch of basil the goat tallow still the house curdled with books the dust’s bad temper the prompt unforeseeable water leak the dog was the work of no one a good swimmer did it all ’til its dying breath his ear bitten in the backwoods worms ate him alive now you do whatever you can to stop from howling Translated from the Spanish

a girl     buried to the chest in red earth         her wrists bound beneath the soil with twine    a crowd gathers to father her                 its infinite hands      curved loosely around a stone                   small enough that no single throw   is named as cause of death           no single hand       accountable to the blood the girl   undaughter         unnamed unfaced         undone from the lineage her photographs               pulled already from bookshelf   from walls    her father among the hands             his pebble streaked with quartz      the first to rise to carve the air & arc     toward the girl the rootless tree          faceless & erect & perhaps the stones             twisting like fireworks                        the girl their nucleus                   rise    & rise for a time                  opposite of rain opposite of  hail & perhaps the silence a beat too long                       & another another                    & then a rustling of  wings                        above the girl a flock                   thick mixed cloud of avifauna          partridge & nightjar & golden sparrow                  & avocet & lapwing               & every other sort of  plover        & ibis & heron & gulls though the sea    is far & to the north & the minutes pass & the girl is untouched & each bird in its beak        tongues a stone • [what if  i will not die] [what          will govern me then] [how         to govern me then] [what bounty           then            on my name] [what stone       what rope              what man will be my officer]

I thought he was over-medicating himself and planning his suicide. I took the pills away from him. He looked defeated. He said as much. I felt sorry for both of us. His expressions held this enormity and a seared-exhausted center. Spatial discomfort started to affect him but didn't take hold till the next day, when he started to lose consciousness and rattled the house yelling about thieves, robbers, drunks, and pill-snatchers.  We didn’t know what was going on: the tumor was rapidly metastasizing its mass through his cerebellum. His body became harder to manage and he sprung through the house with fear tugging violently at his bile duct tube. Aja and I camped in the front rooms. The last night of intimacy, of lucidity—unbeknownst to me—we sat together huddled and I caressed him, cradling his arms, his legs, and his penis. I was sure we had time left for more, but this was the last time he spoke and searched my face and looked at me with a recognition I understood. It’s how we moved out of consciousness. I am haunted by those last days before we succumbed to hospice. I remember how stunning he was resting in bed—that week before, in our library with a cornflower blue-sheeted bed made by Ashby and Spider. In that bed, he had a look of wonder when we put movies on—he excited over Wilson, the ball in Castaway and stared unblinkingly at Tom Hanks. We giggled over this, and appreciated how Andrew put the Eno station on next, and Aja lit and framed this sheeted bed with a twinkling lamp, an illuminant: bulbs he found soothing. We all watched him compose in the air to Philip Glass. I wished that we could have unleashed him to his afterlife then. That's what he would have wanted: a release to his own universe sonant and material, an ethereal ball. An awkward Tom Hanks, a Wilson, and a castaway in a glittering hand-printed sea. This death sequence was the one I wanted for him.

My last Sabbath, I follow the girls, who sneak into the wedding tent, scattered with sun flower seeds and remnants of celebration. They each stand up on a table. Take a crushed beer can as a microphone, sing and move their fifteen-year-old hips. I watch, clap for them, until a small face peers in the door. A boy. His face white with something. The door slamming, his very small fist holding it shut, having found what was inside wrong. Enough, I tell him; enough! He leaves. The girls dance again, but less bold. Look: the boy has come back, is looking you hard in the eye, through the crack of the door. There, in his hand, a neon plastic BB gun. He does this for his grandmother and for his son.