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for Jackson Allen My friend wears my scarf at his waist I give him moonstones He gives me shell & seaweeds He comes from a distant city & I meet him We will plant eggplants & celery together He weaves me cloth Many have brought the gifts I use for his pleasure silk, & green hills & heron the color of dawn My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind He backlights my dreams He has built altars beside my bed I awake in the smell of his hair & cannot remember his name, or my own.

(lines 71-99) Frost shall freeze fire eat wood earth shall breed ice shall bridge water a shield wear. One shall break frost’s fetters free the grain from wonder-lock —One who all can. Winter shall wane fair weather come again the sun-warmed summer! The sound unstill the deep dead wave is darkest longest. Holly shall to the pyre hoard be scattered when the body’s numb. Name is best. A king shall win a queen with goods beakers, bracelets. Both must first be kind with gifts. Courage must wax war-mood in the man, the woman grow up beloved among her people, be light of mood hold close a rune-word be roomy-hearted at hoard-share and horse-giving. When the hall drinks she shall always and everywhere before any company greet first the father of aethelings with the first draught —deft to his hand she holds the horn— and when they are at home together know the right way to run their household. The ship must be nailed the shield framed from the light linden. But how loving the welcome of the Frisian wife when floats offshore the keel come home again! She calls him within walls, her own husband —hull’s at anchor!— washes salt-stains from his stiff shirt brings out clothes clean and fresh for her lord on land again. Love’s need is met.

The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, line 907 The exhibition opened on a rainy Thursday, with cello suite. They hung the paintings to be viewed from both front and back. Luna moths flapped their great green sail-wings. Stingrays flapped their great gray sail-wings. Those visiting the exhibition were encouraged to touch. Captions were available in Braille and audio. The exhibition tasted like cherries. A critic asked if the exhibition was a “facile juxtaposition of   ideals.” The mother of the exhibition calls constantly and the father, never. The exhibition has taken to pouring a little scotch in the coffee. When designing layout, remember it is crucial how a bias cut fits at the exhibition’s hips and foot traffic turns to the right, not the left. They hung the sculptures to be viewed from both above and below. They painted the walls a shade of “eggshell, minus calcium.” The exhibition did not consider itself an exhibitionist until the incident at the east window. The exhibition is very sorry and will refund upon request. Stingrays flapped their great gray sail-wings. Luna moths flapped their great green sail-wings. No matter how short a trip, the exhibition packs two pairs of shoes. The exhibition never knows when it is coming home again.

I chose the place where I would rest When death should come to claim me, With the red-rose roots to wrap my breast And a quiet stone to name me. But I am laid on a northern steep With the roaring tides below me, And only the frosts to bind my sleep, And only the winds to know me.

for Kwame Dawes Your scuttled pays floats—fiery—in the ether; Blazing, it vomits smudge-smoke. Your mind chars Black because you yaw—moth-like—too near flames. You douse your dream-scorched brain with slave-sweat rum— The only gold you can own, corroding Your liver. Your anthem plays to gunfire. When you think about it (when you can breathe)— After all the lies that frame nostalgia, All the dead faces that occupy photographs, All the slain lovers pitched into ditches, Your eyes itch and ache with water, then dry— Curling like dead leaves, starving for gold fire.

These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance, Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew, Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks Show sharply in it, as they might in snow. But it’s soon gone in the sun—what good does it do? The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees, Are grey and shrivelled. And the men who live here Are small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes. Bring water with you if you come to live here— Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so deep That one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas. Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing, Mountains of ice. You will have need of these Profundities and peaks of wet and cold. Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier, Birds of a golden colour, who will sing Of leaves that do not wither, watery fruits That heavily hang on long melodious boughs In the blue-silver forests of deep valleys. I have now been here—how many years? Years unnumbered. My hands grow clawlike. My eyes are large and starved. I brought no bird with me, I have no cistern Where I might find the moon, or river, or snow. Some day, for lack of these, I’ll spin a web Between two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang there Face downward, like a spider, blown as lightly As ghost of leaf. Crows will caw about me. Morning and evening I shall drink the dew.

and I heard an unending scream piercing nature. —from the diary of Edvard Munch , 1892 At the greyhound bus stations, at airports, at silent wharfs the bodies exit the crafts. Women, men, children; cast out from the new paradise. They are not there in the homeland, in Argentina, not there in Santiago, Chile; never there in Montevideo, Uruguay, and they are not here in America They are in exile: a slow scream across a yellow bridge the jaws stretched, widening, the eyes multiplied into blood orbits, torn, whirling, spilling between two slopes; the sea, black, swallowing all prayers, shadeless. Only tall faceless figures of pain flutter across the bridge. They pace in charred suits, the hands lift, point and ache and fly at sunset as cold dark birds. They will hover over the dead ones: a family shattered by military, buried by hunger, asleep now with the eyes burning echoes calling Joaquín, María, Andrea, Joaquín, Joaquín, Andrea en exilio From here we see them, we the ones from here, not there or across, only here, without the bridge, without the arms as blue liquid quenching the secret thirst of unmarked graves, without our flesh journeying refuge or pilgrimage; not passengers on imaginary ships sailing between reef and sky, we that die here awake on Harrison Street, on Excelsior Avenue clutching the tenderness of chrome radios, whispering to the saints in supermarkets, motionless in the chasm of playgrounds, searching at 9 a.m. from our third floor cells, bowing mute, shoving the curtains with trembling speckled brown hands. Alone, we look out to the wires, the summer, to the newspaper wound in knots as matches for tenements. We that look out from our miniature vestibules, peering out from our old clothes, the father's well-sewn plaid shirt pocket, an old woman's oversized wool sweater peering out from the makeshift kitchen. We peer out to the streets, to the parades, we the ones from here not there or across, from here, only here. Where is our exile? Who has taken it?

When we got close enough we could hear rivers inside the ice heaving splits the groaning of a ledge about to calve. Strewn in the moraine fresh moose sign— tawny oblong pellets breaking up sharp black shale. In one breath ice and air— history, the record of breaking— prophecy, the warning of what's yet to break out from under four stories of bone-crushing turquoise retreating.

You will buy your life as a series of "experiences" to which you will belong. Have a good flight. •

By living late, and sleeping late, we miss the moment when the bats come home to roost— when crooked shadows flit in jagged loops that seem to seek the chimney, seem to miss, then somehow disappear into the eaves; and they (the bats) tuck wing to fur to wing in crevices and roof-beam beveling, doze through our nearly diametric lives, invisible as brown on brown—until today, wakened by dreams, I caught a slight, compelling corner-glimpse in gray first light, of sudden motion in the mostly still new dawn; and drawn, I rose to see the flight: our dark companions exiting the night.