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By way of my mother, the deacon with the slick gray hair and money clip in his pocket can claim a percentage of my body like tithe rights. And on this Sunday, as with every other Sunday, he is a slender ebony panel in the fence of faith, one man in the company of men standing shoulder to shoulder in suits, tapping their toes, clapping their hands, putting muscle to work in the making of praise music. We Baptists call this devotion, my working definition of which is faithfulness to the light. To the extent that God is as white as the clouds of heaven, this theory holds. To the extent these particular men are dark, I must consider other possibilities: that God remade himself in my image so that we could be closer or that devotion means the commitment of black men to stand with one another

Late fall in the villages of Pompey, Preble, Oran, Delphi Falls, churched river and woods. In Homer and Ovid, the localities and principalities of central New York, the hollows and corners of the burnt-over districts visited by angels in the 1800's who led us to greatness: awakenings, gold, portents and lies, heaven, women's suffrage, and bundling with the other in the love beds while we waited for the lamb, the dove, the velvet of the ten-point buck grunting through the underbrush to rut. We learned in divine time a year's a day. We learned obedience and had charismatic children. And now the boy's an angelic eighteen days or six thousand years, as he leaves to serve. He did what we told him: blocked for punts—no one likes to block for punts— and when his friends crashed the truck in a ditch, he waited for the cops and took the rap, nice kid, because he did the act of deliverance one does in central New York and made the vows, pledged, testified, and swore and participated in the sport greater than the coming of the dead, and escorted the exaggerated girl to the prom where he was befuddled with organza and tulle and he did not forget the corsage, an orchid in a box he stared into: the white outer whorl and the inner whorl and pouted purple lip. He butterflied the pollen with the lashes of his eyes. The flower was his terror. He was not meant to be the indwelling beauty of things and surely he was not meant to be the wind in Iraq with three others in his division and become the abstract shape of a god formed from a blood clot. I've seen the pictures, the vague shapes that ripple in the heat until I was terrified. It looked like he still moved. Remember fall in Delphi? All ardent and catastrophic and counter, elbows flailing, he ran in the flat places scraped from the gold hills and valleys.

In bed as the machinery of morning begins, indistinguishable the subterranean turbines of the A train from the jet engine as it gins the clouds, rips and reseams the length of dungaree on its way to Pittsburgh (with the terrible and subtle cargoes, with ashes and a cat under the seat) from the pulleys of the service elevators from the baffled sound across the alley of the hand-iron press and the sewing machine motors whirring bobbins that stitch together the hot properties of Seoul and the suburbs and the idiot village of Chelm, needle the veronica and the Buddha robe and the sateen for spring. I looked over at her. Her skin a warp of Christ and a weft of meat. All night she had hauled me and the boy and the smoky, feckless men I was across the fens and stretches of mesquite through the tunnels and delivered me to my misery and the laborious knots of the sheets I wound myself in. And she was exhausted from Eros and swollen from anger. She could stand to put on a few pounds. I could see it in her ribs. Before I would marry my restlessness to her terror, before the crushes and wages could be made into our equity, before the endlessness would end in spinning jennies and sleaze and the noise of a fleet of vehicles with tinted windows testing the evacuation routes, I would cut, then peel, then dice, then caramelize some onions before she wasted away to nothing.

1 Nothing passes,Lord,but what you allow. Mornings the milky sap on my knuckles burns. Last night the piglets fought then suckled in the barn. Still no word. Our one cow grazes but won’t come in. The pamphlets say: Patience is required. I say, let’s try again but John blames the state, the neighbors, the way we wrote our bios, filling out the forms. Across the road our neighbor starts his truck while God, feather by feather, downs a wren — swollen, its black eyes shiny, small dark tongue. In the drainpipe, something slithers wet and stuck. A race runner? A ground skink shedding skin? Lizards, John tells me,can’t bear live young. 2 John tells me:lizards can’t bear live young. Another of   God’s mysteries: hard rain muddying the corn. The kind woman at the agency said,it takes longer for certain types of couples

After Martin Luther King Jr. The day they killed Martin we could not return to New York City our visiting senior class stuck in Huntsville streets blazed with suffering in that small Alabama town in the dull shroud of morning the whole world went crazy devouring whatever light that lit our half-cracked windows.

for Ben Fenton-Smith None are more familiar with dew than professional footballers. From early grades they are used to running through practice drills and hurling their burly frames through rucks while the moist chaff of wet grass under the winter lights softens their fall, accustoms the half- back to the slippery ball and writes green cuneiform on wet sandshoes. And they fear it in the morning, kicking off the dew in the ‘twos’ because they ignored a coach’s warning. Half their lives are spent in clouds of condensation or the cold heat of a winter sun where even the crowds seem like droplets on the concrete rose of the stadium. In the final days of their season , sweat-spangled on the eve of their triumph, the ball on a string and their plays honed, even the doubters believe. And the last day is, once again, already an aftermath: the ground’s been shaved and sucked dry by the noon sun and the paddock has become a paved and bristled hell for those who will collide with it and pinion flesh on earth, earth on flesh and spill blood for the sake of the game. Possession is the law; all are possessed. And when the crowd melts into the dry darkness, after that great red football’s booted between the uprights of the sky- scrapers and gone, the sky bawls cheerless little drops for the victors and decks the oval with the losers’ jewels.

Can’t occupy the same space at the same time unless, of course, you land in Dhaka, rickshaws five or six abreast. They are all here: studded metal backboards ablaze with red flowers, Heineken boxes, a Bangladeshi star with blue eyes, peacocks, pink fans of filigree. The drivers sweat and strain in the plaid lungis, and each face seems to say Allah takes and Allah gives. A woman breathes into her green shawl against the dust on the road’s median. A man with a plaid scarf (surplus from The Gap) slaps the rump of a passing gray car as though it’s a horse or a dog. You are there, too, your maroon sleeves begin to stick despite your deodorant. Under your orna, a laminated map and digital camera cradled in your lap. One strand of silver wiry by your ear. Bits of children’s songs snag in your windpipe. Other words surface: sweatshop and abject poverty, and you let them. They mix with the low rumbling that began on the plane,ms and bs tumbling, amplified in the streets: the rickshaw bells’ light metal, the nasal peal of horns. On this continent, the ocean’s giant tongue has swept away miles of coastline, and bodies flood the water. Dust sifts into your lungs and sinks—feline, black, to remain long after you leave.

The grocery had provided him with boxes of rotten lettuce He was loading them onto a yellow pick-up truck He was a frail white man and wore a plaid woolen shirt and frayed dungarees I was sitting in a gray chevrolet rent-a-dent “I have eight adult geese and twenty-six ducks,” he said and i said “I’ll bet you have a big management problem,” and he said “They’re no trouble at all. My wife raised two of them in the house. When she goes near their pen the geese waddle towards her and nibble the lettuce out of her hand” “I'd never think of killing them” he said “They keep me out of the bars”

Ar. Now you have been taught words and I am free, My pine struck open, your thick tongue untied, And bells call out the music of the sea. From this advantage I can clearly see You will abuse me in your grovelling pride Now you have been taught words: and I am free To pinch and bully you eternally, Swish round the island while the mermaids hide And bells call out the music of the sea. I watched you closely from within my tree: Explicit fish, implicit homicide, Now you have been taught words, and I am free To hear, who has the real victory? For you may drown as I draw in the tide And bells call out the music of the sea. You lust for Her and bare your teeth at me. Your roarings only mock the ache inside Now you have been taught words. And I am free While bells call out the music of the sea. Cal. Have you no feelings that you cannot tame? Ar. My target’s everything, and in my aim, Achievement, while another, Lesser lusts may drive: Legs hate their lazy brother Who saps your precious Five To keep alive. Cal. Have you no visions that you cannot name? Ar. A picture should extend beyond its frame, There being no limitation To bright reality: For all their declaration And complexity, Words cannot see. Cal. Are not the object and the word the same? Ar. Words are but counters in a childish game; Each move you make is token Only of the rules: Any rule may be broken By the boy from a clever school Or a bored fool. Cal. How is it, then, that words can hurt and maim? Ar. If words do that, you are already lame, Bowed down by words like firewood, Clenched with words like ice: Language is for the coward Who thinks a rule is nice At any price. Cal. O then unteach me language, let the cool Sea sidle up and draw me to its deep Silence. Teach me how to break the rule. Ar. Once in the game you cannot make that leap. The sea will cast you up again if you Pretend to break the rule you really keep. Cal. But tell me, then, if what you say is true, What was your knowledge when you could not move? What instinct told what function what to do? Ar. Words would not help the channelled sea to prove It was not ocean-free, nor pine no fuel: I just existed, wordless, in my groove. Nor do I use words now, though you In innocence may think I do: We’ve left the island and engage In conversation on a page Sand-white and, like it, bounded by A vast of dull eternity. And I (since I can understand) Am master of this paper land. Think I am quick? I am so too, But when I’m bored with biffing you, Eve’s monkey, still that is not all, Nor Milan’s ghost, his beck and call To all the fancies that I can. You are too human, Caliban. You lunge and ape the human dance. Music and love are sustenance Withheld from you like tinkling charms Beyond your crying outstretched arms. You think I did not want my tree? Or tire of showing off? Being ‘free’ All of the time is like your choice Of endless fireworks of the voice: You splutter, gasp and madly shout, But dampness seeps up: you go out, The silly words trail off your tongue. So wings get tired, flapping among The fussy spirits of the air. You curse. I sulk. Always He’s there. The bullet’s speed is not a feat. Of time, but photograph of wheat, A summer fly caught in a flash Of speckled stillness. Hear a splash? You think a glacier does not move? Brilliance of struggling wings can prove Treacle of amber, and a spark The universe, my world my bark I long for, longing for the dark. Cal. A language learnt but nothing understood: Now you at large, and all I owned before Lost like my name within the magic wood. No word for saying ‘no’ to fetching wood. The marvellous Glove splits on the hairy claw: A language learnt but nothing understood. At first I framed what syllables I could: She laughed at me and left me on the shore, Lost, like my name within the magic wood. Think of my rage then, Ariel, as I stood, (A picture in my head I could not draw, A language learnt but nothing understood), Weeping into the sea, hoping She would Turn back to lead me through that little door, Lost like my name within the magic wood. Our Master calls: I think it is not good To be unhappy with your freedom or My language (learnt, but nothing understood), Lost like my name within the magic wood.

Courage, my Soul, now learn to wield The weight of thine immortal shield. Close on thy head thy helmet bright. Balance thy sword against the fight. See where an army, strong as fair, With silken banners spreads the air. Now, if thou be’st that thing divine, In this day’s combat let it shine: And show that Nature wants an art To conquer one resolvèd heart. PLEASURE Welcome the creation’s guest, Lord of earth, and heaven’s heir. Lay aside that warlike crest, And of Nature’s banquet share: Where the souls of fruits and flowers Stand prepared to heighten yours. SOUL I sup above, and cannot stay To bait so long upon the way. PLEASURE On these downy pillows lie, Whose soft plumes will thither fly: On these roses strewed so plain Lest one leaf thy side should strain. SOUL My gentler rest is on a thought, Conscious of doing what I ought. PLEASURE If thou be’st with perfumes pleased, Such as oft the gods appeased, Thou in fragrant clouds shalt show Like another god below. SOUL A soul that knows not to presume Is heaven’s and its own perfume. PLEASURE Everything does seem to vie Which should first attract thine eye: But since none deserves that grace, In this crystal view thy face. SOUL When the Creator’s skill is prized, The rest is all but earth disguised. PLEASURE Hark how music then prepares For thy stay these charming airs; Which the posting winds recall, And suspend the river’s fall. SOUL Had I but any time to lose, On this I would it all dispose. Cease, tempter. None can chain a mind Whom this sweet chordage cannot bind. CHORUS Earth cannot show so brave a sight As when a single soul does fence The batteries of alluring sense, And heaven views it with delight. Then persevere: for still new charges sound: And if thou overcom’st, thou shalt be crowned. PLEASURE All this fair, and soft, and sweet, Which scatteringly doth shine, Shall within one beauty meet, And she be only thine. SOUL If things of sight such heavens be, What heavens are those we cannot see? PLEASURE Wheresoe’er thy foot shall go The minted gold shall lie, Till thou purchase all below, And want new worlds to buy. SOUL Were’t not a price, who’d value gold? And that’s worth naught that can be sold. PLEASURE Wilt thou all the glory have That war or peace commend? Half the world shall be thy slave The other half thy friend. SOUL What friends, if to my self untrue! What slaves, unless I captive you! PLEASURE Thou shalt know each hidden cause; And see the future time: Try what depth the centre draws; And then to heaven climb. SOUL None thither mounts by the degree Of knowledge, but humility. CHORUS Triumph, triumph, victorious Soul; The world has not one pleasure more: The rest does lie beyond the Pole, And is thine everlasting store.