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A sound-loop hangs from the white gallows of the page: letter j strung up, the crook of her foot postmortem— leg sway. Mouth retches a vowelround o then from the roof gasps           a dark l slung. Is not innocent: the i with a white noose also around his neck, blindfolded, asphyxiated. Spaces within                    words are                       miniature knots that suspend letters— the paper always tightening.

Finis Poloniae— a phrase/figure of speech, that apart from its literal historical meaning stands in for the end of empires. Charged atmosphere, everything breathes damply, epicene air—if it could think anything it would think un-European things like monsoons and yellow seas. Greatness bears itself to death, says its last words to itself, a foreign-sounding swansong, generally misunderstood, sometimes tolerated— Finis Poloniae— perhaps on a rainy day, bummer, but in this instance a sound of happiness followed by solo horn, and then a hydrangea, most placid of flowers, capable of standing out in the rain into November, dropped softly into the grave.

I wonder if I know enough to know what it’s really like to have been here: have I seen sights enough to give seeing over: the clouds, I’ve waited with white October clouds like these this afternoon often before and taken them in, but white clouds shade other white ones gray, had I noticed that: and though I’ve followed the leaves of many falls, have I spent time with the wire vines left when frost’s red dyes strip the leaves away: is more missing than was never enough: I’m sure many of love’s kinds absolve and heal, but were they passing rapids or welling stirs: I suppose I haven’t done and seen enough yet to go, and, anyway, it may be way on on the way before one picks up the track of the sufficient, the world-round reach, spirit deep, easing and all, not just mind answering itself but mind and things apprehended at once as one, all giving all way, not a scrap of question holding back.

more the idea of the flame than the flame, as in: the flame of the rose petal, the flame of the thorn the sun is a flame, the dog’s teeth flames ~ to be clear: with the body, captain, we can do as we wish, we can do as we wish with the body but we cannot leave marks—capt’n I’m trying to get this right ~ the world’s so small, the sky’s so high we pray for rain it rains, we pray for sun it suns we pray on our knees, we move our lips we pray in our minds, we clasp our hands our hands look tied before us ~ I remember, capt’n, something, it didn’t happen, not to me—this guy, I knew him by face, I don’t remember his name, one night he’s walking home from a party, a car it clipped him, for hours he wandered, dazed, his family, his neighbors, with flashlights they searched, all night, the woods, calling out his name ~ here’s the part, capt’n, where I try to tell a story as if it were a confession: once, in elementary school, I was hiding out on damon rock, lighting matches & letting them drop to the leaves below—little flare- ups, flash fires—a girl wandered down the path, she just stood there, watching the matches fall from my hand— ~ capt’n, I’m trying to be precise: hot day, a cage in the sun, a room without air, the mind-bending heat, the music a flame—hey metallica hey britanny hey airless hey fuse, I don’t know how it happened, I was perched far above, I offered her a match to pull down her pants—one match, her hairless body, hey little girl, I dropped it unlit. I didn’t know what it was I was looking at. ~ hey capt’n I don’t know if I’m allowed hey capt’n years ago I’m walking down a road one drunk night, even now I wonder—sometimes still I imagine—was I hit by a bus, am I stumbling am I dazed, this dream this confession, hey little girl is yr daddy home, hey capt’n hey sir am I making any sense? ~ the boy stood on the burning deck, stammering elocution, wait— the boy stood in the burning cage, stammering electrocution, no—the boy stood in the hot-hot room stammering I did stammering I did stammering I did stammering I did stammering everything you say I did I did. ~ hey metallica hey britanny hey airless hey fuse hey phonograph hey hades hey thoughtless hey ~ capt’n this room is on fire capt’n, this body will not stop burning capt’n oh my captain this burning has become a body capt’n oh my captain this child is ash capt’n oh my captain my hands pass right through her capt’n oh my captain I don’t know what it is I’m looking at ~ it’s important to be precise, to say what I know— the sun is fire, the center of the earth is fire, yr mother’s cunt is fire, an airless flame, still, still, I don’t know why she pushed me out, this cold-cold furnace, we all were pushed, a rim of light around our heads, she gave a kick, sent us crawling out, toward the flame, toward the pit, the flaming pit, yr lover’s cunt, the flame her tongue, the flame a thorn ~ everyday, capt’n, sir, captain, I was left, a child, after school, I was alone, I found a match, under the sink I found a can, a spray can,ly-sol dis-infectant, it made a torch, I was careful the flame didn’t enter the can, I knew it would explode, somehow I knew, I’m trying to be clear sir—the flame shot across the room, then it was gone

There are trees and they are on fire. There are hummingbirds and they are on fire. There are graves and they are on fire and the things coming out of the graves are on fire. The house you grew up in is on fire. There is a gigantic trebuchet on fire on the edge of a crater and the crater is on fire. There is a complex system of tunnels deep underneath the surface with only one entrance and one exit and the entire system is filled with fire. There is a wooden cage we’re trapped in, too large to see, and it is on fire. There are jaguars on fire. Wolves. Spiders. Wolf-spiders on fire. If there were people. If our fathers were alive. If we had a daughter. Fire to the edges. Fire in the river beds. Fire between the mattresses of the bed you were born in. Fire in your mother’s belly. There is a little boy wearing a fire shirt holding a baby lamb. There is a little girl in a fire skirt asking if she can ride the baby lamb like a horse. There is you on top of me with thighs of fire while a hot red fog hovers in your hair. There is me on top of you wearing a fire shirt and then pulling the fire shirt over my head and tossing it like a fireball through the fog at a new kind of dinosaur. There are meteorites disintegrating in the atmosphere just a few thousand feet above us and tiny fireballs are falling down around us, pooling around us, forming a kind of fire lake which then forms a kind of fire cloud. There is this feeling I get when I am with you. There is our future house burning like a star on the hill. There is our dark flickering shadow. There is my hand on fire in your hand on fire, my body on fire above your body on fire, our tongues made of ash. We are rocks on a distant and uninhabitable planet. We have our whole life ahead of us.

Fire in the window! flashes in the pane! Fire on the roof-top! blazing weather-vane! Turn about, weather-vane! put the fire out! The sun’s going down, sir, I haven’t a doubt.

DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD. We sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold, An easy entrance, night and day. Not far away we saw the port, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and talked until the night, Descending, filled the little room; Our faces faded from the sight, Our voices only broke the gloom. We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead; And all that fills the hearts of friends, When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again; The first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, And leave it still unsaid in part, Or say it in too great excess. The very tones in which we spake Had something strange, I could but mark; The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark. Oft died the words upon our lips, As suddenly, from out the fire Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap and then expire. And, as their splendor flashed and failed, We thought of wrecks upon the main, Of ships dismasted, that were hailed And sent no answer back again. The windows, rattling in their frames, The ocean, roaring up the beach, The gusty blast, the bickering flames, All mingled vaguely in our speech; Until they made themselves a part Of fancies floating through the brain, The long-lost ventures of the heart, That send no answers back again. O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned! They were indeed too much akin, The drift-wood fire without that burned, The thoughts that burned and glowed within.

Aluminum tank indifferent in its place behind a glass door in the passageway, like a tea urn in a museum case; screaming-machines that dumbly spend each day waiting for gas or smoke or hands or heat, positioned like beige land mines overhead, sanguine on walls, or posted on the street like dwarf grandfather clocks spray painted red; little gray hydrant in its warlike stance; old fire escape, all-weather paint job peeling, a shelf for threadbare rugs and yellowing plants; sprinkler heads, blooming from the public ceiling; all sitting supernaturally still, waiting for us to cry out. And we will.

All the angels of Tie Siding were on fire. The famous sky was gone. Presumably the mountains were still there, invisible in haze. OK, there was only one angel, but she was a torch in the wind, beside the wind-ripped American flag the post office flies. OK, she wasn't literally on fire. Maybe her angelic red hair made me think she was ablaze as it flaunted the prairie and made a festival of itself. There was a fireworks stand nearby, entirely beside the point, as was the Fourth of July. It was really dry. It was fire season. It was the wind festival, featuring an angel standing in it, letting her red hair conflagrate history, reduce it to ash, bid it start anew, erase the sky with atrocity's own smoke. She wore, besides her flame of hair, blue jeans and a singlet. She was violent in the wind. I started walking toward her. I'm still walking toward her, no idea what to say when I get there.

Toplight hammered down by shadowless noon, A palindrome of midnight, retrograde From last month’s solstice in smoke and flame, In molten glares from chrome or glass. I feel Fever from the cars I pass, delirium Trembling out from the radiators. The dog-day romance seems to be physical, As young free lances come into their own, Sunbrowned, imperial in few clothes, Heat-struck adulthood a subject to youth And fitful as traffic, the mind pure jumble But for that secret overriding voice Advising and persuading at each crossroads; The struggle toward freedom to forge a day. Smoke; flame; oiled, gray-brown air. Jackhammers and first gear on the avenues; Stuntmen driving taxicabs; patient, blue, Hippo aggressiveness of a bus, nudging Aside the sedans. And the peculiar Fascination of a row of workshops— The dark interiors with skylight sunstripes; A figure walking in slow motion among Pistons; rough justice of a die cutter; A helmeted diver, wielding acetylene, Crouched over some work of sunken treasure That sparkles gold at a probe from his torch . . . . Seismic shocks interrupt this dream—a stampede Of transports flat out to make the light, Mack truck, Diamond Reo, a nameless tanker, IT International, a Seatrain destined For the Port Authority docks—one more Corrugated block to pile on the rest, Red, green, gray, and blue, waiting for a ship In the Grancolombiana line . . . . The seagoing city radiates invisibly Over the world, a documentary sublime. Lunch hour, even the foods are fast, potluck In the melting pot: the Italian girl With a carton of chicken; Puerto Rican folding A pizza; the black woman with an egg roll; A crop-headed secretary in round, Metal spectacles eats plain yogurt (she’s Already mantis thin) and devours glamour Mags . . . . Our crowd scene, a moving fresco: But is it really there? The adversary Today is named Random. How capture all this Without being taken captive in turn, Install it as something more than backdrop, As a necessity, not a sundry? Suppose just an awareness of the way Living details might be felt as vision Is vision, full, all there ever was—this Instant palindromic noon, the joined hands Of the clock, end and beginning . . . . Surely The first to consider imagining stars Constellations had already done as much, Just by making some brilliant connections; Mind crowned itself in a round of leaps from point To point across the empty stage of night . . . . * * * * * Now as a pigeon banks, descends, hovers, And drops on asphalt with back-thrust wings, Comes a desire to be lifted in the balance, Rise to some highest point and then be met By a fierce new light haloing lashes shatter Into spears of aurora, naked eye become Prismatic at last and given to see in kind All the transformed inhabitants forever go About their errands, on a new scale: the rainbow Is the emblem for this moment filtering through The body’s meshwork nerves, and a heartbeat impulse All around puts troops of feet in step with music, Persistent, availing, that disregards the frayed Years, vagaries, downfall among trash, accident, Loss; or because it knows these rushes upward On something like heartbreak into the only sky, Air aspirant with fractioned voices, feverfew Of the sensed illusion, higher ground, progressions Sounded in the spheres—so each step takes them further, Sceptered, into daytime, saluting the outcome. There is a fire that surpasses the known burning, Its phoenix center a couple that must be there, Blast furnace, dynamo, engendering a city, Phosphor spines that bend and meet to weld, to fuse As a divining rod—sluicings, spillway, braid, Chorded basses that set myriad threads afire, Newborn limbs and reach of the proven tendon now Let go into empowered brilliance, rayed showers, The garden regained. In this light the place appears: Hands that rise or fall, muted gestures of welcome And good-bye, face that turns and comes forward to claim A smile latent in the afternoon air, vague crowds Falling down streets without character toward An offered covenant—love that gives them each a name.