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Krakatau split with a blinding noise and raised from gutted, steaming rock a pulverized black sky, over water walls that swiftly fell on Java and Sumatra. Fifteen days before, in its cage in Amsterdam, the last known member of Equus quagga, the southernmost subspecies of zebra, died. Most of the wild ones, not wild enough, grazing near the Cape of Good Hope, had been shot and skinned and roasted by white hunters. When a spider walked on cooling Krakatau's skin, no quagga walked anywhere. While seeds pitched by long winds onto newborn fields burst open and rooted, perhaps some thistle flourished on the quagga's discarded innards. The fractured island greened and hummed again; handsome zebras tossed their heads in zoos, on hired safari plains. Who needs to hear a quagga's voice? Or see the warm hide twitch away a fly, see the neck turn, curving its cream and chestnut stripes that run down to plain dark haunches and plain white legs? A kind of horse. Less picturesque than a dodo. Still, we mourn what we mourn. Even if, when it sank to its irreplaceable knees, when its unique throat closed behind a sigh, no dust rose to redden a whole year's sunsets, no one unwittingly busy two thousand miles away jumped at the sound, no ashes rained on ships in the merciless sea.

For my father I think by now the river must be thick with salmon. Late August, I imagine it as it was that morning: drizzle needling the surface, mist at the banks like a net settling around us — everything damp and shining. That morning, awkward and heavy in our hip waders, we stalked into the current and found our places — you upstream a few yards and out far deeper. You must remember how the river seeped in over your boots and you grew heavier with that defeat. All day I kept turning to watch you, how first you mimed our guide's casting then cast your invisible line, slicing the sky between us; and later, rod in hand, how you tried — again and again — to find that perfect arc, flight of an insect skimming the river's surface. Perhaps you recall I cast my line and reeled in two small trout we could not keep. Because I had to release them, I confess, I thought about the past — working the hooks loose, the fish writhing in my hands, each one slipping away before I could let go. I can tell you now that I tried to take it all in, record it for an elegy I'd write — one day — when the time came. Your daughter, I was that ruthless. What does it matter if I tell you I learned to be? You kept casting your line, and when it did not come back empty, it was tangled with mine. Some nights, dreaming, I step again into the small boat that carried us out and watch the bank receding — my back to where I know we are headed.

The men that worked for England They have their graves at home: And birds and bees of England About the cross can roam. But they that fought for England, Following a falling star, Alas, alas for England They have their graves afar. And they that rule in England, In stately conclave met, Alas, alas for England They have no graves as yet.

... mindful of the unhonored dead —Thomas Gray Here they stood, whom the Kecoughtan first believed gods from another world, one pair of longjohns each, bad-yellow, knotted with lice, the godless, bandy-legged runts with ear bit off, or eye gouged, who killed and prayed over whatever flew, squatted, or swam. In huts hacked from mulberry, pine, and swamp cyprus, they huddled ripe as hounds. At cockcrow scratched, shuffled marsh paths, took skiffs and ferried to dead-rise scows, twenty-footers dutifully designed and of right draft for oysters, crabs, and croakers. They were seaworthy. According to diaries hand-scrawled, and terse court records, our ancestors: barbarous, habitual, Virginians. Some would not sail, came ashore, walked on the land, kept faces clenched, lay seed and family, moved often, and are gone. Of them this harbor says nothing. Of the sea’s workmen, not much, no brass plate of honor, no monument in the square, no square, merely the wreckage of a place. But they stood— proud, black and white, surly in mist at the hovel of the boatwright, arm pointed: Build me one like that yonder! Meaning the gray hull I see across a cove, bottom up, canting, nameless now as the hard, long arm, daddy’s or granddaddy’s, that points, but known to the one said to crush clams in his palms, thus got paid, always, who built the derelicts, and who, barring feud, took stick in hand here, made that grave gouged line of a keel, then his broad brow lifted seaward, in silence, sometimes summoning a shape in memory, and it hove up, and was changed some, they whined, but God knows all they wanted, all he made for them was to be a little unlike the drab hulls of the dead ones, but not too much. Like that one yonder! This was the image he gave them to dream of change, tomorrow only a guess, the sea’s story their life-stink and bow-slam and stillness, and they saw how the fair ones grew, quick riddle-riders our fathers feared, schools that gave us a message sewn on chest, Bible, slate, and this worm-holed future entered blindly as I now have entered his place, feeling for log-char, back-flung gates of light, and the builder. Like that one ... the lies begin, each inventing why he should rise up, he should hack out the joy they dream, his pitch boiled, black as mud seaming their legs. Suddenly, I see and take up a cap left as worthless on a stump, its stained round fitting my head like water. Merely to wait where the builder heaved shards and chips and abortive clots to the tide’s tongue-lap is to feel the unconceived shape pulse down his arm, into fingers that took up that stick to let loose the ingathered wilderness of dreams: loon, crow, osprey, gull, the man who cannot believe what he sees, but still sees it. An immense shadow making over water. Stick in hand, eyes squint. And there it is, the wind cradling of an Eagle, wing-sails, unfurled, bow-chopping white water head on, a creature now there, now gone. A man, I have to hold my face up, study how air heats, builds a rising push until the high circle of sight skids out everywhere. Dreaming change, I understand, almost, the problem: is he not harnessed, himself, this light flyer, this father designed to sail like a small god, to screech down upon pine-huddled, hungry chicks he must send off with his lethal, air-buoyed shape? Nothing in him asks what is over the wave-edge where our brothers float and sink, lovely shadows, by the millions. Putting my back to the sea-worn trunk they have left me, I pull the stick through the dirt, and remember the long line, man-weight in it, and dark-buoyed. It grows with freckling light, with the answering of birds crying out the only speech we all have above our unfinished country that looms still in the soul, that would bear us hence, out of the water that beats in, out of the water that bore us all here.

In memory of two English poets, Matt Simpson and Michael Murphy, d. 2009 Teach-cheap, teach-cheap, teach-cheap, teach-cheap— Sparrows are plying their chisels in the summer ivy, Chipping the seconds spark by spark out of the hours. I read in each whistling chip the sun’s holography. My brain’s a film, I’m made of timed exposures, And pounding my ears and eyes with waves of light— These animate flakes, these pictures I call sight. But now you’re out of the picture, no one can keep Coherent sightings of you, except in language.

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one autumnal face. Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape, This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape. If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame; Affection here takes reverence's name. Were her first years the golden age? That's true, But now she's gold oft tried and ever new. That was her torrid and inflaming time, This is her tolerable tropic clime. Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence, He in a fever wishes pestilence. Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were, They were Love's graves, for else he is no where. Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit Vow'd to this trench, like an anachorit; And here till hers, which must be his death, come, He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb. Here dwells he; though he sojourn ev'rywhere In progress, yet his standing house is here: Here where still evening is, not noon nor night, Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight. In all her words, unto all hearers fit, You may at revels, you at council, sit. This is Love's timber, youth his underwood; There he, as wine in June, enrages blood, Which then comes seasonabliest when our taste And appetite to other things is past. Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the platan tree, Was lov'd for age, none being so large as she, Or else because, being young, nature did bless Her youth with age's glory, barrenness. If we love things long sought, age is a thing Which we are fifty years in compassing; If transitory things, which soon decay, Age must be loveliest at the latest day. But name not winter faces, whose skin's slack, Lank as an unthrift's purse, but a soul's sack; Whose eyes seek light within, for all here's shade; Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made; Whose every tooth to a several place is gone, To vex their souls at resurrection: Name not these living death's-heads unto me, For these, not ancient, but antique be. I hate extremes, yet I had rather stay With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day. Since such love's natural lation is, may still My love descend, and journey down the hill, Not panting after growing beauties. So, I shall ebb on with them who homeward go.

For Kenneth Koch You don't need a pony to connect you to the unseeable or an airplane to connect you to the sky. Necessary it is to love to live and there are many manuals but in all important ways one is on one's own. You need not cut off your hand. No need to eat a bouquet. Your head becomes a peach pit. Your tongue a honeycomb. Necessary it is to live to love, to charge into the burning tower then charge back out and necessary it is to die. Even for the trees, even for the pony connecting you to what can't be grasped. The injured gazelle falls behind the herd. One last wild enjambment. Because of the sores in his mouth, the great poet struggles with a dumpling. His work has enlarged the world but the world is about to stop including him. He is the tower the world runs out of. When something becomes ash, there's nothing you can do to turn it back. About this, even diamonds do not lie.

What beck'ning ghost, along the moon-light shade Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade? 'Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gor'd, Why dimly gleams the visionary sword? Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well? To bear too tender, or too firm a heart, To act a lover's or a Roman's part? Is there no bright reversion in the sky, For those who greatly think, or bravely die? Why bade ye else, ye pow'rs! her soul aspire Above the vulgar flight of low desire? Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of angels and of gods; Thence to their images on earth it flows, And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows. Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age, Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage: Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres; Like eastern kings a lazy state they keep, And close confin'd to their own palace, sleep. From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die) Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky. As into air the purer spirits flow, And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below; So flew the soul to its congenial place, Nor left one virtue to redeem her race. But thou, false guardian of a charge too good, Thou, mean deserter of thy brother's blood! See on these ruby lips the trembling breath, These cheeks now fading at the blast of death: Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before, And those love-darting eyes must roll no more. Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball, Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall; On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates. There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, (While the long fun'rals blacken all the way) "Lo these were they, whose souls the furies steel'd, And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield. Thus unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day! So perish all, whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow For others' good, or melt at others' woe." What can atone (oh ever-injur'd shade!) Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid? No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier. By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd, By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd, By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd, By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd! What though no friends in sable weeds appear, Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year, And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances, and the public show? What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace, Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face? What though no sacred earth allow thee room, Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb? Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest, And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast: There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, There the first roses of the year shall blow; While angels with their silver wings o'ershade The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made. So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name, What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot; A heap of dust alone remains of thee, 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be! Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung, Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue. Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays, Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays; Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part, And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart, Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er, The Muse forgot, and thou belov'd no more!

The vase was made of clay With spines of straw For strength. The sunbaked vase Soaked in a deep blue dye for days. The events in this wilderness, Portrayed in the round of the vase, Depend on shades of indigo against The masked areas of the clay, a flat pearl color To detail the big sky and snow... This Montana field in winter is not sorrowful: A bugle skips through notes: We view it all somehow from the center of the field And there are scattered groups of cavalry. Some of these Men were seasoned by civil war. Their caps are blue. Their canteens are frozen. The horses shake their heads Bothered by beads of ice, the needles of ice Forming at both sides of their great anvil heads. The long, blue cloaks of the officers fall over the haunches Of the horses. The ammunition wagons Beside the woods are blurred by the snowy weather... Beyond the wagons, farther even, into the woods There is a sloping streambed. This is The dark side of the vase which is often misunderstood. From here through the bare trees there’s A strange sight to be seen at the very middle of the field: A valet is holding a bowl of cherries—archetype and rubric, A general with white hair eats the fruit while introducing its color Which will flow through the woods in early December. An Indian woman came under dark clouds to give birth, unattended In the deep wash inside the woods. She knew the weather Could turn and staked the tips of two rooted spruce trees To the earth to make a roof. The deerskin of her robe is in her mouth. Her legs spread, He feet are tied up in the roof of darkening spruce.No stars Show through!

Can we not force from widow'd poetry, Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust, Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust, Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour, Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay Upon thy ashes, on the funeral day? Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense Through all our language, both the words and sense? 'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain And sober Christian precepts still retain, Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame, Grave homilies and lectures, but the flame Of thy brave soul (that shot such heat and light As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright, Committed holy rapes upon our will, Did through the eye the melting heart distil, And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach As sense might judge what fancy could not reach) Must be desir'd forever. So the fire That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire, Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, Glow'd here a while, lies quench'd now in thy death. The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds Of servile imitation thrown away, And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage A mimic fury, when our souls must be Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstasy, Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat Of two-edg'd words, or whatsoever wrong By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line Of masculine expression, which had good Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood Our superstitious fools admire, and hold Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more They each in other's dust had rak'd for ore. Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time, And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim From so great disadvantage greater fame, Since to the awe of thy imperious wit Our stubborn language bends, made only fit With her tough thick-ribb'd hoops to gird about Thy giant fancy, which had prov'd too stout For their soft melting phrases. As in time They had the start, so did they cull the prime Buds of invention many a hundred year, And left the rifled fields, besides the fear To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands Of what is purely thine, thy only hands, (And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more Than all those times and tongues could reap before. But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be Too hard for libertines in poetry; They will repeal the goodly exil'd train Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign Were banish'd nobler poems; now with these, The silenc'd tales o' th'Metamorphoses Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page, Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age Turn ballad rhyme, or those old idols be Ador'd again, with new apostasy. Oh, pardon me, that break with untun'd verse The reverend silence that attends thy hearse, Whose awful solemn murmurs were to thee, More than these faint lines, a loud elegy, That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence The death of all the arts; whose influence, Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies, Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies. So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand, But some small time maintain a faint weak course, By virtue of the first impulsive force; And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile Thy crown of bays, oh, let it crack awhile, And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes. I will not draw the envy to engross All thy perfections, or weep all our loss; Those are too numerous for an elegy, And this too great to be express'd by me. Though every pen should share a distinct part, Yet art thou theme enough to tire all art; Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice I on thy tomb this epitaph incise: Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit; Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best, Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.