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With adams, caddis, tricos, light cahills, blue-wing olives, royal coachmen, chartreuse trudes, green drakes, blue duns, black gnats, Nancy quills, Joe’s hoppers, yellow humpies, purple chutes, prince nymphs, pheasant tails, Eileen’s hare’s ears, telicos, flashbacks, Jennifer’s muddlers, Frank bugs, sow bugs, zug bugs, autumn splendors, woolly worms, black buggers, Kay’s gold zuddlers, clippers, tippet, floatant, spools of leader, tin shot, lead shot, hemostats, needle nose, rod, reel, vest, net, boots, cap, shades and waders, gortex shell and one bent Macanudo— I wade in a swirl of May-colored water, cast a fine gray quill, the last tie of my father.

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure— of fishing on the Susquehanna. I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one— a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table— trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna. There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna, rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandanna sitting in a small, green flat-bottom boat holding the thin whip of a pole. That is something I am unlikely ever to do, I remember saying to myself and the person next to me. Then I blinked and moved on to other American scenes of haystacks, water whitening over rocks, even one of a brown hare who seemed so wired with alertness I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

The fist clenched round my heart loosens a little, and I gasp brightness; but it tightens again. When have I ever not loved the pain of love? But this has moved past love to mania. This has the strong clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of unreason, before plunging howling into the abyss. Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

Rhyme, the rack of finest wits, That expresseth but by fits True conceit, Spoiling senses of their treasure, Cozening judgment with a measure, But false weight; Wresting words from their true calling, Propping verse for fear of falling To the ground; Jointing syllabes, drowning letters, Fast'ning vowels as with fetters They were bound! Soon as lazy thou wert known, All good poetry hence was flown, And art banish'd. For a thousand years together All Parnassus' green did wither, And wit vanish'd. Pegasus did fly away, At the wells no Muse did stay, But bewail'd So to see the fountain dry, And Apollo's music die, All light failed! Starveling rhymes did fill the stage; Not a poet in an age Worth crowning; Not a work deserving bays, Not a line deserving praise, Pallas frowning; Greek was free from rhyme's infection, Happy Greek by this protection Was not spoiled. Whilst the Latin, queen of tongues, Is not yet free from rhyme's wrongs, But rests foiled. Scarce the hill again doth flourish, Scarce the world a wit doth nourish To restore Phoebus to his crown again, And the Muses to their brain, As before. Vulgar languages that want Words and sweetness, and be scant Of true measure, Tyrant rhyme hath so abused, That they long since have refused Other cæsure. He that first invented thee, May his joints tormented be, Cramp'd forever. Still may syllabes jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never. May his sense when it would meet The cold tumor in his feet, Grow unsounder; And his title be long fool, That in rearing such a school Was the founder.

The fitful alternations of the rain, When the chill wind, languid as with pain Of its own heavy moisture, here and there Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.

I. He Thinks of the Chinese Snake Who Is the Beginning and the End If you or I should die That day desire would not renew Itself in any bed. The old snake of the world, eternity That holds his tail in his mouth, Would spit it out And ease off through the grass Like a piece of music To we don’t know where. Then it would be for the living To beat the grass and bring him back. But would he be set tamely To sucking his tail again In that absence? II. He Marvels at the Persistence of Passion Like black duennas the hours sit And read our lips and watch our thighs. The years are pederasts: they wait For boys and will not meet my eyes. And children are cool astronomers Who scan us like old galaxies And calculate how many years Before we’ll turn to gas or freeze. And yet sometimes I have to shave And brush my teeth at dawn to keep My healthy middle-aged alive Hands off you where you lie asleep. III. Sometimes He Contemplates Adultery I had no insanity to excuse this, But for a week my heart ran with another love, Imagined another house, down to its books and bed. My miserable fluttered heart, you understand, chose this. Now I am led home—cold, grave, Contractual as a dog—by my scurrilous head. IV. His Hands, On a Trip to Wisconsin It is night. I am a thousand miles from home. My hands lie awake and are aware of themselves, One on my noisy chest, the other, the right one, A matter of several pounds, oppressing my forehead. It is a week since it fluted the air goodbye. I think of the path in space the thing has made since then, Veering and halting; of the shapes hands make Washing a car, or in the uses of music. Two shapes it has traced honor this right hand: The curve that a plane rides out As it leaves or takes a deck on the scalloped sea; Handily, handily then this two-pound creature Felt the wired air, let the two monsters kiss, The shapes that it graphed then fairer Than the hair of the clouds that watched Or the sea’s own scalloped hair. And he and his gauche fellow, moving symmetrically, Have described one body so well They could dress that shape in air As they long to do now though they lie Laced hunks of flesh on my belly— Ahead of them some years of roving Before the white landscape of age checks them, Your body’s disaster, sure to be traced there, Even so slight a change in a dear shape Halting them, baffled, lascivious suddenly, Or folded cold, or feeling your hands folded cold. V. Lines from His Guest-book Shelley’s houses and walks were always a clutter of women, and god knows what further arrangements he kept in his mind. Drôle de menage , Rimbaud said of himself and Verlaine, As if there were any other kind. In Yeats’ tower, in all that fakery of ghosts, Some solid women came and slept as Mrs. Yeats’ guests. We are most our own strange selves when we are hosts. Here those who have loved or befriended me came to a proof: They must lodge in my head and in company under one roof. Keeping house is the instinct of love; it is always a little ridiculous. Yet it is with no light welcome we welcome the friends of the house.

Music, wind, someone’s car horn Imagining to return Buddha’s big toe on the lake Your intricate gaze of form Eating the lake like a word Unzipped carefully by day You walked it hesitantly You taste something step by step • Losing my way, wildly blue Perhaps annotated past The return gaze, my snowfall My city gate firmly shut Even to wonder how you’ve been Isn’t what you want, therefore Lightly enclosing my text Cast down toward what I’ve not seen • Happily a ceiling fan You grasp the word sweltering Days are tectonic, the sound Of one memory spoken Who waits for you at the lake’s Wild edge? Bright glint of the noun You knew dissatisfaction Speaking even against time • Recorded a length of time I held memory tightly Unoriginal dimming Of  the light there, a found scene Number three on the dirt path Father carries his school bag Without use for meter, yet Both skies open to thunder • Don’t speak to me of sorghum Red fields, pressed up toward a sky Whatever called to me there Too wild, attempting a face Old verses for my father Dignify the cooling page Black earth is the word it makes Tilts forward, consequential

or The Unfortunate Story of the Unmarried Flora Carrillo And the Man Who Loved Her Before He Died his Famous Death, From Whose Single Liaison a Daughter Was Born And the Advice, Rather the Explanation, Both of Them Left for Her, And the Story Also Of What She Became, and That She Was Happy 1. Three did not count. A fourth was forgiven by the Father Torres In exchange for reasonable payment, Two full days of the Hail Mary. Bigger than priests, the fifth Indiscretion was born on a Thursday, early Evening in a November not too cold. No rain had fallen And the birds had not yet gone. She chose a black dress, this Flora, Florita + here evoke the names of saints + Underneath which she carried tonight An old blade, but of fine Toledo forging Long as the member of this man In love with this woman standing at his door. Her head was filled with the vines of the jungle The noises of a lion, the feel of ten birds Trying with their beaks to get out. All anger: that she had hoped he would Come to her bedroom. And that he had. Faster than !that she took from him his rolled tongue Hanging there between his thin legs, his two-fingers, This girl’s wrist and fist of his Its central tendon and skin that moved on itself, This small and second body of his Which had found its way to her second mouth, This part of himself which he had given her Then taken back on this same day, earlier His ugly afternoon of loving her too much. He would scream as she had When she had taken him in first as a leg-bone And held him there too long, too much Until he had become a pinky-finger + here evoke the holy names + Which she !took now and put in the dowry She would make for her new daughter. With it she would write a note, Nothing else was left to do: Daughter, you will be an only child. The story of your birth will smell on you. Do this: take baths filled with rosemary With leaves, with pinched orange peels. Keep secret the fact of yourself. Be happy enough, happy with this much life. Ask for nothing. Do not live for a long time.

One Green moves through the tops of trees and grows lighter greens as it recedes, each of which includes a grey, and among the greys, or beyond them, waning finely into white, there is one white spot, absolute; it could be an egret or perhaps a crane at the edge of the water where it meets a strip of sand. Two There is a single, almost dazzling white spot of a white house out loud against the fields, and the forest in lines receding, rises, and then planes. Color, in pieces or entire; its presence veneers over want; in all its moving parts, it could be something else half-hidden by trees. Conservatory, gloriette, gazebo, or bandshell, a door ajar on the top floor. Three The trees are half air. They fissure the sky; you could count the leaves, pare time defined as that which, no matter how barely, exceeds what the eye could grasp in a glance; intricate woods opening out before a body of water edged with a swatch of meadow where someone has hung a bright white sheet out in the sun to dry. Four A white bird in a green forest is a danger to itself. Stands out. Shines. Builds up inside. Like it’s dangerous to cry while driving or to talk to strangers or to stare at the sun and a thousand other things we’ve always heard people who wear white see better at night, though they gradually lose this trait as they age. Five The air across the valley is slightly hazy though thinning though patches remain between the groves of trees that edge a clearing in which stands a single house. A child in a white t-shirt has just walked out of the house and is turning to walk down to the lake.

Whose bread, buttered on the side of the angels, falls from a great height? So you wait to take the temperature of your enslavement: is it slow-growing, like a virus, or magnanimous and complete? Your interlocutors are generous, the little stretching rack is cute, and all grown over, like an English cottage, with tiny, exhibitionistic roses. Will they open wide enough for you? This is a song about paralysis, despite your sweet mouth running all that rivulet of chatter, despite the fan dance with the missing lampshade bobbing on your head, the children and their panic-stricken laughter.