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1 THE GESTURE The question is: how does one hold an apple Who likes apples And how does one handle Filth? The question is How does one hold something In the mind which he intends To grasp and how does the salesman Hold a bauble he intends To sell? The question is When will there not be a hundred Poets who mistake that gesture For a style. 2 THE LITTLE HOLE The little hole in the eye Williams called it, the little hole Has exposed us naked To the world And will not close. Blankly the world Looks in And we compose Colors And the sense Of home And there are those In it so violent And so alone They cannot rest. 3 THAT LAND Sing like a bird at the open Sky, but no bird Is a man— Like the grip Of the Roman hand On his shoulder, the certainties Of place And of time Held him, I think With the pain and the casual horror Of the iron and may have left No hope of doubt Whereas we have won doubt From the iron itself And hope in death. So that If a man lived forever he would outlive Hope. I imagine open sky Over Gethsemane, Surely it was this sky. 4 PAROUSIA Impossible to doubt the world: it can be seen And because it is irrevocable It cannot be understood, and I believe that fact is lethal And man may find his catastrophe, His Millennium of obsession. air moving, a stone on a stone, something balanced momentarily, in time might the lion Lie down in the forest, less fierce And solitary Than the world, the walls Of whose future may stand forever. 5 FROM VIRGIL I, says the buzzard, I— Mind Has evolved Too long If ‘life is a search For advantage.’ ‘At whose behest Does the mind think?’ Art Also is not good For us Unless like the fool Persisting In his folly It may rescue us As only the true Might rescue us, gathered In the smallest corners Of man’s triumph. Parve puer . . . ‘Begin, O small boy, To be born; On whom his parents have not smiled No god thinks worthy of his table, No goddess of her bed’

Nothing is known about Helen but her voice Strange glittering sparks Lighting no fires but what is reechoed Rechorded, set on the icy sea. All history is one, as all the North Pole is one Magnetic, music to play with, ice That has had to do with vision And each one of us, naked. Partners. Naked. *       *       * Helen: A Revision ZEUS: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this. THERSITES: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is. ZEUS: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player. THERSITES: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play. ZEUS: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you. THERSITES: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun. ZEUS: I do not understand your language. [They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.] *       *       * And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost Hope the cost. And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge Each terror's lodge. And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat Where they say all passages to pay the debt The lighted yet. *       *       * The focus sing Is not their business. Their backs lay By not altogether being there. Here and there in swamps and villages. How doth the silly crocodile Amuse the Muse *       *       * And in the skyey march of flesh That boundary line where no body is Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms And bring my death. Both air and water rattle there And mud and fire Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud and bring my death. A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs The battlefield has harms. The trees have half Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord From hair and mud and flesh.

1. Let us think of God as a lover Who never calls, Whose pleasure in us is aroused In unrepeatable ways, God as a body we cannot Separate from desire, Saying to us, “Your love Is only physical.” Let us think of God as a bronze With green skin Or a plane that draws the eye close To the texture of paint. Let us think of God as life, A bacillus or virus, As death, an igneous rock In a quartz garden. Then, let us think of kissing God with the kisses Of our mouths, of lying with God, As sea worms lie, Snugly petrifying In their coral shirts. Let us think of ourselves As part of God, Neither alive nor dead, But like Alpha, Omega, Glyphs and hieroglyphs, Numbers, data. 2. First forgive the silence That answers prayer, Then forgive the prayer That stains the silence. Excuse the absence That feels like presence, Then excuse the feeling That insists on presence. Pardon the delay Of revelation, Then ask pardon for revealing Your impatience. Forgive God For being only a word, Then ask God to forgive The betrayal of language. 3. God of the Syllable God of the Word God Who Speaks to Us God Who Is Dumb The One God  The Many God the Unnameable God of the Human Face God of the Mask God of the Gene Pool Microbe  Mineral God of the Sparrow’s Fall God of the Spark God of the Act of God Blameless  Jealous God of Surprises And Startling Joy God Who Is Absent God Who Is Present God Who Finds Us In Our Hiding Places God Whom We Thank Whom We Forget to Thank Father God   Mother Inhuman Infant Cosmic Chthonic God of the Nucleus Dead God   Living God Alpha God    Zed God Whom We Name God Whom We Cannot Name When We Open Our Mouths With the Name God   Word God 4. The new day cancels dread And dawn forgives all sins, All the judgments of insomnia, As if they were only dreams. The ugly confrontation After midnight, with the mirror, Turns white around the edges And burns away like frost. Daylight undoes gravity And lightness responds to the light. The new day lifts all weight, Like stepping off into space. Where is that room you woke to, By clock-light, at 3 a.m.? Nightmare’s many mansions, Falling, have taken it with them. The new day, the day’s newness, And the wretchedness that, you thought, Would never, never depart, Meet—and there is goodbye. A bad night lies ahead And a new day beyond that— A simple sequence, but hard To remember in the right order. 5. Lord of dimensions and the dimensionless, Wave and particle, all and none, Who lets us measure the wounded atom, Who lets us doubt all measurement, When in this world we betray you Let us be faithful in another.

one lies in rags on the street and his stomach is empty and he wishes for death one sits with friends at tea and backgammon and his mind is empty and he wishes for death one sits in a straight-backed chair at a desk and his bank account is empty and he wishes for death one lies in bed staring out to sea and the place next to him in bed is empty and he wishes for death one flies back with food in its beak and its nest is empty and only this one says we should give it another try

What stopped her bawling was the doorbell ringing, and a man standing there with five yellow roses, bulked up with green fronds and tied in a dinky knot with olive twine. There was no card to say who the flowers came from. The man’s uniform was blue with a brown insignia of a spider on his right top pocket that she saw he kept unbuttoned. As he waltzed down the path to the gate the Siamese cat that frequented the garden raised its back and hissed. The man laughed and flounced out to his waiting white van. Oh, the shit-faced side streets of life! OK, she’d been born in Madras, in a flowery tea shop while an albino conjurer magicked a hare to leap from his heavily-ringed brown fingers. Five yellow roses? Enough to encourage her to cook saffron rice, with turmeric-tinged prawns and sautéed yellow courgettes. She didn’t play the Ry Cooder where yellow roses say goodbye.

What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant; and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.

Ranks of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters, Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble, Death’s candy-bed. Stone caked on stone, Dry pyramids and racks of iron balls. Life is observed, a precipitate of pellets, Or grammarians freeze it into spar, Their rhomboids, as for instance, the finest crystal Fixing a snowfall under glass. Gods are laid out In alabaster, with horny cartilage And zinc ribs; or systems of ecstasy Baked into bricks. There is a gallery of sculpture, Bleached bones of heroes, Gorgon masks of bushrangers; But the quarries are of more use than this, Filled with the rolling of huge granite dice, Ideas and judgments: vivisection, the Baptist Church, Good men and bad men, polygamy, birth-control . . . Frail tinkling rush Water-hair streaming Prickles and glitters Cloudy with bristles River of thought Swimming the pebbles— Undo, loosen your bubbles!

When the kids in my class ask why I am not allowed to pledge to the flag I tell them It's against my religion but don't say, I am in the world but not of the world. This, they would not understand. Even though my mother's not a Jehovah's Witness, she makes us follow their rules and leave the classroom when the pledge is being said. Every morning, I walk out with Gina and Alina the two other Witnesses in my class. Sometimes, Gina says, Maybe we should pray for the kids inside who don't know that God said "No other idols before me." That our God is a jealous God. Gina is a true believer. Her Bible open during reading time. But Alina and I walk through our roles as Witnesses as though this is the part we've been given in a play and once offstage, we run free, sing "America the Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" far away from our families —knowing every word. Alina and I want more than anything to walk back into our classroom press our hands against our hearts. Say, "I pledge allegiance . . ." loud without our jealous God looking down on us. Without our parents finding out. Without our mothers' voices in our heads saying,You are different. Chosen. Good. When the pledge is over, we walk single file back into the classroom, take our separate seats Alina and I far away from Gina. But Gina always looks back at us —as if to say, I'm watching you. As if to say, I know.

the breath               the trees               the bridge the road                  the rain                the sheen the breath               the line                  the skin the vineyard            the fences             the leg the water                the breath             the shift the hair                  the wheels             the shoulder the breath               the lane                the streak the lining                the hour                the reasons the name                the distance          the breath the scent                the dogs                the blear the lungs                the breath             the glove the signal               the turn                  the need the steps                the lights               the door the mouth               the tongue             the eyes the burn                  the burned            the burning

(excerpt) .... O heart, the equal poise of love’s both parts, Big alike with wounds and darts, Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same, And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame; Live here, great heart, and love and die and kill, And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still. Let this immortal life, where’er it comes, Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms; Let mystic deaths wait on ’t, and wise souls be The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee. O sweet incendiary! show here thy art, Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart, Let all thy scatter’d shafts of light, that play Among the leaves of thy large books of day, Combin’d against this breast, at once break in And take away from me my self and sin; This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be, And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me. O thou undaunted daughter of desires! By all thy dow’r of lights and fires, By all the eagle in thee, all the dove, By all thy lives and deaths of love, By thy large draughts of intellectual day, And by thy thirsts of love more large than they, By all thy brim-fill’d bowls of fierce desire, By thy last morning’s draught of liquid fire, By the full kingdom of that final kiss That seiz’d thy parting soul and seal’d thee his, By all the heav’ns thou hast in him, Fair sister of the seraphim! By all of him we have in thee, Leave nothing of my self in me: Let me so read thy life that I Unto all life of mine may die.