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You must do battle with Eros       I am more worried about space, pressed for details collapsed in chaos with my sword holding up the sky the girl said. They cared not for love lying ever that they loved But I your leader wounded in gender and bleeding for Eros fought it away from my true beginning as now. Always climbing that hill in several ways. One goes past the Baptist Church and through the ugly trees, houses I only visualize in dreams you have no right to pursue me to my origins man as bipolar as the one candidate, forgettable as the other. We once lived in a postwar barracks blue heated by a black stove of assumptions Eros a youth admits no equal; Aphrodite the slut; Chaos is whom I admire that keeps forgetting love in favor of this terrible mixity I am for example ... these poems. Out of the pre-beginning a different beauty. They want you to confess something like in church, that a man will save you. But I am your leader savior and poet I am your general out of the desert thee most ardent void precursor of love Eros approaches again not the man but quality sculpted genitals arush with the words of unreason: I will never die. Which I is I if I can remain chaotic I’ll tell you who you are that you’ve never anticipated, but know the only one. Without a thing. To be is not to have; nor to belong; nor to have been born. You are not the child of earth. Beauty still thy name.

NYTimes headline for September 4th 2012: Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy As Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits They return to the site whence they came with eyes tearful, with psalms trumpeting the air. They stand ever so watchful; guarding the graves of their ghosts and their kind. They shall not forget.  They shall not want. They lie down in green silky pastures and finding their way to the still waters. They restore and nourish their soul. They walk through the dark valleys; always the shadows of death lurking behind them. Always striding till they reach the comforting light. They fear no evil.  Man fears. They forage for food and they eat amongst their enemies because they fear not.  They are the happiest. The honey is under their tongue. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone. Their hearts awaken.  They know no violence. Even in the waning light they tower over all else. They are the landscape.  They are the trees. They throw up the dust in their dance.  The skies become misty. They rise up and lead each other away into the dusk.

How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy. Once I was the size of a falcon, the size of a lion, once I was not the elephant I find I am. My pelt sags, and my master scolds me for a botched trick. I practiced it all night in my tent, so I was somewhat sleepy. People connect me with sadness and, often, rationality. Randall Jarrell compared me to Wallace Stevens, the American poet. I can see it in the lumbering tercets, but in my mind I am more like Eliot, a man of Europe, a man of cultivation. Anyone so ceremonious suffers breakdowns. I do not like the spectacular experiments with balance, the high-wire act and cones. We elephants are images of humility, as when we undertake our melancholy migrations to die. Did you know, though, that elephants were taught to write the Greek alphabet with their hooves? Worn out by suffering, we lie on our great backs, tossing grass up to heaven—as a distraction, not a prayer. That’s not humility you see on our long final journeys: it’s procrastination. It hurts my heavy body to lie down.

An enormous list: coming and goings, nights and mornings, births and deaths and rebirths and second deaths and little lapses like grace notes where sadness surges in: sadness surges in, a passing-windshield light-effect on the ceiling. Would you prefer it some other way? I’m versatile. I’m hungry. I’m hot. I’m not really sad either. I’m happy, it’s just that this happiness isn’t the happiness I expected or sought and for a time I confused this happiness with the sadness I thought I was experiencing. I feel a lot better now. Oooh. That should give you an indication of the improvement. Oooh, there it goes again. And again, only I didn’t say ‘Oooh’ this time. I can’t explain it, but it feels terrific, like a totally fulfilled infatuation or a California Lifestyle apartment ad.

1 Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake, inimitable contriver, endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon, thank you for such as it is my gift. I have made up a morning prayer to you containing with precision everything that most matters. ‘According to Thy will’ the thing begins. It took me off & on two days. It does not aim at eloquence. You have come to my rescue again & again in my impassable, sometimes despairing years. You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning. Unknowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs: how can I ‘love’ you? I only as far as gratitude & awe confidently & absolutely go. I have no idea whether we live again. It doesn’t seem likely from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view but certainly all things are possible to you, and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter & to Paul as I believe I sit in this blue chair. Only that may have been a special case to establish their initiatory faith. Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement. May I stand until death forever at attention for any your least instruction or enlightenment. I even feel sure you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty. 2 Holy, as I suppose I dare to call you without pretending to know anything about you but infinite capacity everywhere & always & in particular certain goodness to me. Yours is the crumpling, to my sister-in-law terrifying thunder, yours the candelabra buds sticky in Spring, Christ’s mercy, the gloomy wisdom of godless Freud: yours the lost souls in ill-attended wards, those agonized thro’ the world It this instant of time, all evil men, Belsen, Omaha Beach,— incomprehensible to man your ways. May be the Devil after all exists. ‘I don’t try to reconcile anything’ said the poet at eighty, ‘This is a damned strange world.’ Man is ruining the pleasant earth & man. What at last, my Lord, will you allow? Postpone till after my children's deaths your doom if it be thy ineffable, inevitable will. I say ‘Thy kingdom come’, it means nothing to me. Hast Thou prepared astonishments for man? One sudden Coming? Many so believe. So not, without knowing anything, do I. 3 Sole watchman of the flying stars, guard me against my flicker of impulse lust: teach me to see them as sisters & daughters. Sustain my grand endeavours: husbandship & crafting. Forsake me not when my wild hours come; grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams; achieve in me patience till the thing be done, a careful view of my achievement come. Make me from time to time the gift of the shoulder. When all hurt nerves whine shut away the whiskey. Empty my heart toward Thee. Let me pace without fear the common path of death. Cross am I sometimes with my little daughter: fill her eyes with tears. Forgive me, Lord. Unite my various soul, sole watchman of the wide & single stars. 4 If I say Thy name, art Thou there? It may be so. Thou art not absent-minded, as I am. I am so much so I had to give up driving. You attend, I feel, to the matters of man. Across the ages certain blessings swarm, horrors accumulate, the best men fail: Socrates, Lincoln, Christ mysterious. Who can search Thee out? except Isaiah & Pascal, who saw. I dare not ask that vision, though a piece of it at last in crisis was vouchsafèd me. I altered then for good, to become yours. Caretaker! take care, for we run in straits. Daily, by night, we walk naked to storm, some threat of wholesale loss, to ruinous fear. Gift us with long cloaks & adrenalin. Who haunt the avenues of Angkor Wat recalling all that prayer, that glory dispersed, haunt me at the corner of Fifth & Hennepin. Shield & fresh fountain! Manifester! Even mine. 5 Holy, & holy. The damned are said to say ‘We never thought we would come into this place.’ I’m fairly clear, my Friend, there’s no such place ordained for inappropriate & evil man. Surely they fall dull, & forget. We too, the more or less just, I feel fall asleep dreamless forever while the worlds hurl out. Rest may be your ultimate gift. Rest or transfiguration! come & come whenever Thou wilt. My daughter & my son fend will without me, when my work is done in Your opinion. Strengthen my widow, let her dream on me thro’ tranquil hours less & down to less. Abrupt elsewhere her heart, I sharply hope. I leave her in wise Hands. 6 Under new management, Your Majesty: Thine. I have solo’d mine since childhood, since my father’s suicide when I was twelve blew out my most bright candle faith, and look at me. I served at Mass six dawns a week from five, adoring Father Boniface & you, memorizing the Latin he explained. Mostly we worked alone. One or two women. Then my poor father frantic. Confusions & afflictions followed my days. Wives left me. Bankrupt I closed my doors. You pierced the roof twice & again. Finally you opened my eyes. My double nature fused in that point of time three weeks ago day before yesterday. Now, brooding thro’ a history of the early Church, I identify with everybody, even the heresiarchs. 7 After a Stoic, a Peripatetic, a Pythagorean, Justin Martyr studied the words of the Saviour, finding them short, precise, terrible, & full of refreshment. I am tickled to learn this. Let one day desolate Sherry, fair, thin, tall, at 29 today her life the Sahara Desert, who has never once enjoyed a significant relation, so find His lightning words. A Prayer for the Self Who am I worthless that You spent such pains and take may pains again? I do not understand; but I believe. Jonquils respond with wit to the teasing breeze. Induct me down my secrets. Stiffen this heart to stand their horrifying cries, O cushion the first the second shocks, will to a halt in mid-air there demons who would be at me. May fade before, sweet morning on sweet morning, I wake my dreams, my fan-mail go astray, and do me little goods I have not thought of, ingenious & beneficial Father. Ease in their passing my beloved friends, all others too I have cared for in a travelling life, anyone anywhere indeed. Lift up sober toward truth a scared self-estimate. 9 Surprise me on some ordinary day with a blessing gratuitous. Even I’ve done good beyond their expectations. What count we then upon Your bounty? Interminable: an old theologian asserts that even to say You exist is misleading. Uh-huh. I buy that Second-century fellow. I press his withered glorifying hand. You certainly do not as I exist, impersonating as well the meteorite & flaring in your sun your waterfall or blind in caves pallid fishes. Bear in mind me, Who have forgotten nothing, & Who continues. I may not foreknow & fail much to remember. You sustain imperial desuetudes, at the kerb a widow. 10 Fearful I peer upon the mountain path where once Your shadow passed, Limner of the clouds up their phantastic guesses. I am afraid, I never until now confessed. I fell back in love with you, Father, for two reasons: You were good to me, & a delicious author, rational & passionate. Come on me again, as twice you came to Azarias & Misael. President of the brethren, our mild assemblies inspire, & bother the priest not to be dull; keep us week-long in order; love my children, my mother far & ill, far brother, my spouse. Oil all my turbulence as at Thy dictation I sweat out my wayward works. Father Hopkins said the only true literary critic is Christ. Let me lie down exhausted, content with that. 11 Germanicus leapt upon the wild lion in Smyrna, wishing to pass quickly from a lawless life. The crowd shook the stadium. The proconsul marvelled. ‘Eighty & six years have I been his servant, and he has done me no harm. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?’ Polycarp, John’s pupil, facing the fire. Make too me acceptable at the end of time in my degree, which then Thou wilt award. Cancer, senility, mania, I pray I may be ready with my witness.

"Who is it that this dark night Underneath my window plaineth?" It is one who from thy sight Being, ah, exil'd, disdaineth Every other vulgar light. "Why, alas, and are you he? Be not yet those fancies changed?" Dear, when you find change in me, Though from me you be estranged, Let my change to ruin be. "Well, in absence this will die; Leave to see, and leave to wonder." Absence sure will help, if I Can learn how myself to sunder From what in my heart doth lie. "But time will these thoughts remove; Time doth work what no man knoweth." Time doth as the subject prove; With time still the affection groweth In the faithful turtle-dove. "What if you new beauties see? Will not they stir new affection?" I will think they pictures be, Image-like, of saints' perfection, Poorly counterfeiting thee. "But your reason's purest light Bids you leave such minds to nourish." Dear, do reason no such spite; Never doth thy beauty flourish More than in my reason's sight. "But the wrongs love bears will make Love at length leave undertaking." No, the more fools it do shake, In a ground of so firm making Deeper still they drive the stake. "Peace, I think that some give ear! Come no more, lest I get anger!" Bliss, I will my bliss forbear; Fearing, sweet, you to endanger; But my soul shall harbour there. "Well, begone; begone, I say, Lest that Argus' eyes perceive you!" Oh, unjust Fortune's sway, Which can make me thus to leave you; And from louts to run away.

Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything To do it as for Thee. Not rudely, as a beast, To run into an action; But still to make Thee prepossest, And give it his perfection. A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it pass, And then the heav'n espy. All may of Thee partake: Nothing can be so mean, Which with his tincture—"for Thy sake"— Will not grow bright and clean. A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine: Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and th' action fine. This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold; For that which God doth touch and own Cannot for less be told.

Like a fawn from the arrow, startled and wild, A woman swept by us, bearing a child; In her eye was the night of a settled despair, And her brow was o’ershaded with anguish and care. She was nearing the river—in reaching the brink, She heeded no danger, she paused not to think! For she is a mother—her child is a slave— And she’ll give him his freedom, or find him a grave! ’Twas a vision to haunt us, that innocent face— So pale in its aspect, so fair in its grace; As the tramp of the horse and the bay of the hound, With the fetters that gall, were trailing the ground! She was nerved by despair, and strengthen’d by woe, As she leap’d o’er the chasms that yawn’d from below; Death howl’d in the tempest, and rav’d in the blast, But she heard not the sound till the danger was past. Oh! how shall I speak of my proud country’s shame? Of the stains on her glory, how give them their name? How say that her banner in mockery waves— Her “star-spangled banner”—o’er millions of slaves? How say that the lawless may torture and chase A woman whose crime is the hue of her face? How the depths of forest may echo around With the shrieks of despair, and the bay of the hound? With her step on the ice, and her arm on her child, The danger was fearful, the pathway was wild; But, aided by Heaven, she gained a free shore, Where the friends of humanity open’d their door. So fragile and lovely, so fearfully pale, Like a lily that bends to the breath of the gale, Save the heave of her breast, and the sway of her hair, You’d have thought her a statue of fear and despair. In agony close to her bosom she press’d The life of her heart, the child of her breast:— Oh! love from its tenderness gathering might, Had strengthen’d her soul for the dangers of flight. But she’s free!—yes, free from the land where the slave From the hand of oppression must rest in the grave; Where bondage and torture, where scourges and chains Have plac’d on our banner indelible stains. The bloodhounds have miss’d the scent of her way; The hunter is rifled and foil’d of his prey; Fierce jargon and cursing, with clanking of chains, Make sounds of strange discord on Liberty’s plains. With the rapture of love and fullness of bliss, She plac’d on his brow a mother’s fond kiss:— Oh! poverty, danger and death she can brave, For the child of her love is no longer a slave!

In today's correspondence a poetry book detailing the lives of British Queens— with a note enclosed and a question: what does it mean to be a Queen? I could reply and say — this precious stone set in a silver sea: a symbol, like a banner, for mens' love. But these are not my words. I could reply and say— glorying in the glories of my people, sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest. But these are not my words. I could declare— that each Queen is tissue paper thin, transluscent but combined, are my flesh. But I will not solidify my words, instead I will command my secretary to write, with many kind thanks for the little book etc, but to say my thoughts on Queenship can only be ascertained by my actions.

The bears are kept by hundreds within fences, are fed cracked Eggs; the weakest are Slaughtered and fed to the others after being scented With the blood of deer brought to the pastures by Elizabeth’s Men—the blood spills from deep pails with bottoms of slate. The balding Queen had bear gardens in London and in the country. The bear is baited: the nostrils Are blown full with pepper, the Irish wolf dogs Are starved, then, emptied, made crazy with fermented barley: And the bear’s hind leg is chained to a stake, the bear Is blinded and whipped, kneeling in his own blood and slaver, he is Almost instantly worried by the dogs. At the very moment that Elizabeth took Essex’s head, a giant brown bear Stood in the gardens with dogs hanging from his fur. . . He took away the sun, took A wolfhound in his mouth, and tossed it into The white lap of Elizabeth I—arrows and staves rained On his chest, and standing, he, then, stood even taller, seeing Into the Queen’s private boxes—he grinned Into her battered eggshell face. Another volley of arrows and poles, and opening his mouth He showered Blood all over Elizabeth and her Privy Council. The very next evening, a cool evening, the Queen demanded Thirteen bears and the justice of 113 dogs: she slept All that Sunday night and much of the next morning. Some said she was guilty of this and that. The Protestant Queen gave the defeated bear A grave in a Catholic cemetery. The marker said: Peter, a Solstice Bear, a gift of the Tsarevitch to Elizabeth. After a long winter she had the grave opened. The bear’s skeleton Was cleared with lye, she placed it at her bedside, Put a candle inside behind the sockets of the eyes, and, then She spoke to it: You were a Christmas bear—behind your eyes I see the walls of a snow cave where you are a cub still smelling Of your mother’s blood which has dried in your hair; you have Troubled a Queen who was afraid When seated in shade which, standing, You had created! A Queen who often wakes with a dream Of you at night— Now, you’ll stand by my bed in your long white bones; alone, you Will frighten away at night all visions of bear, and all day You will be in this cold room—your constant grin, You’ll stand in the long, white prodigy of your bones, and you are, Every inch of you, a terrible vision, not bear, but virgin!