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SOUL O who shall, from this dungeon, raise A soul enslav’d so many ways? With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands In feet, and manacled in hands; Here blinded with an eye, and there Deaf with the drumming of an ear; A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains Of nerves, and arteries, and veins; Tortur’d, besides each other part, In a vain head, and double heart. BODY O who shall me deliver whole From bonds of this tyrannic soul? Which, stretch’d upright, impales me so That mine own precipice I go; And warms and moves this needless frame, (A fever could but do the same) And, wanting where its spite to try, Has made me live to let me die. A body that could never rest, Since this ill spirit it possest. SOUL What magic could me thus confine Within another’s grief to pine? Where whatsoever it complain, I feel, that cannot feel, the pain; And all my care itself employs; That to preserve which me destroys; Constrain’d not only to endure Diseases, but, what’s worse, the cure; And ready oft the port to gain, Am shipwreck’d into health again. BODY But physic yet could never reach The maladies thou me dost teach; Whom first the cramp of hope does tear, And then the palsy shakes of fear; The pestilence of love does heat, Or hatred’s hidden ulcer eat; Joy’s cheerful madness does perplex, Or sorrow’s other madness vex; Which knowledge forces me to know, And memory will not forego. What but a soul could have the wit To build me up for sin so fit? So architects do square and hew Green trees that in the forest grew.

DORINDA When death shall part us from these kids, And shut up our divided lids, Tell me, Thyrsis, prithee do, Whither thou and I must go. THYRSIS To the Elysium. DORINDA Oh, where is’t? THYRSIS A chaste soul can never miss’t. DORINDA I know no way but to our home, Is our cell Elysium? THYRSIS Turn thine eye to yonder sky, There the milky way doth lie; ’Tis a sure but rugged way, That leads to everlasting day. DORINDA There birds may nest, but how can I That have no wings and cannot fly? THYRSIS Do not sigh, fair nymph, for fire Hath no wings yet doth aspire Till it hit against the Pole: Heaven’s the centre of the soul. DORINDA But in Elysium how do they Pass eternity away? THYRSIS Oh, there’s neither hope nor fear, There’s no wolf, no fox, no bear. No need of dog to fetch our stray, Our Lightfoot we may give away; No oat-pipe’s needful; there thy ears May sleep with music of the spheres. DORINDA Oh sweet! Oh sweet! How I my future state By silent thinking antedate: I prithee let us spend our time to come In talking of Elysium. THYRSIS Then I’ll go on. There sheep are full Of sweetest grass and softest wool; There birds sing consorts, garlands grow, Cool winds do whisper, springs do flow. There always is a rising sun, And day is ever but begun. Shepherds there bear equal sway, And every nymph’s a Queen of May. DORINDA Ah me, ah me! THYRSIS Dorinda, why dost cry? DORINDA I’m sick, I’m sick, and fain would die. Convince me now that this is true By bidding with me all adieu. THYRSIS I cannot live without thee, I, I’ll for thee, much more with thee, die. CHORUS Then let us give Corillo charge o’ the sheep, And thou and I’ll pick poppies, and them steep In wine, and drink on’t even till we weep, So shall we smoothly pass away in sleep.

I My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul? My Self. The consecrated blade upon my knees Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-lady's dress and round The wooden scabbard bound and wound, Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn. My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect its wandering To this and that and t'other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth. My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery— Heart's purple—and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldier's right A charter to commit the crime once more. My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known— That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone. II My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The finished man among his enemies?— How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape? And what's the good of an escape If honour find him in the wintry blast? I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul. I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

the lonely Incorporating the words of L.S. Lowry I used to paint the sea, but never a shore, and nobody was sailing on it. It wasn’t even the sea, it was just my own loneliness. It’s all there, you know. It’s all in the sea. The battle is there, the inevitability of it all, the purpose. When I switched to people they were all lonely. Crowds are the loneliest thing of all, I say. Every individual in them is a stranger to everyone else. I would stand for hours in one spot and scores of little kids who hadn’t had a wash for weeks would group round me. Had I not been lonely, none of my work would have happened. I should not have done what I’ve done, or seen what I’ve seen. There’s something grotesque in me and I can’t help it. I’m drawn to others who are like that. They’re very real people. It’s just I’m attracted to sadness and there are some very sad things. These people are ghostly figures. They’re my mood, they’re myself. Lately, I started a big self-portrait. I thought I won’t want this thing, no one will, so I went and turned it into a grotesque head. memo to lowry You’re right, there are grotesques who shine a dark light that lures us like how the sirens tried to lure Odysseus, and yes, maybe we ourselves are among the grotesques, but there are also the beautiful who, if we’re lucky, save us from ourselves, and validate the sun’s light, and maybe also the moon’s.

You love your friend, so you fly across the country to see her. Your friend is grieving. When you look at her, you see that something’s missing. You look again. She seems all there: reading glasses, sarcasm, leather pumps. What did you expect? Ruins? Demeter without arms in the British Museum? Your friend says she believes there’s more pain than beauty in the world. When Persephone was taken, Demeter damned the world for half the year. The other half remained warm and bountiful; the Greeks loved symmetry. On the plane, the man next to you read a geometry book, the lesson on finding the circumference of a circle. On circumference: you can calculate the way around if you know the way across. You try across with your friend. You try around. I don’t believe in an afterlife, she says.But after K. died, I thought I might go after her.

INS officers raided a building, taking twelve illegal aliens into custody. The owner was cited for employing workers without proper identification. 1. RAID Ernesto’s boot heels are wild hooves Being roped in, left bound in the air. Carmen, slow-footed, nauseous with child, Fights them off by swinging her purse. “Pinche cabrones saben hablar español Cuando nos van a arrestar,” she says As her voice is drowned out by a row Of washing machines on their rinse cycle. Like a cat spooked out of a trash bin, Sal runs into the street. Chorus: ¡Chingado! 2. A GIRL AND HER FATHER We were driving through town, Mama, Right by where people pick up the bus When this man jumps out right in front of us. Dad hit the brakes. His eyes got this big, Mama. He was running from the law, that’s for sure. Just be glad no one got hurt, mija. Try not to think about it anymore, mija. We won’t go that way again, that’s for sure. 3. THE FACTORY Two of the old-timers talked about unions: “A trabajar, porque hablar de las uniones Sólo trae la migra de nuevo.” 4. A YOUNG MOTHER Can you imagine how many diapers We went through with the twins? The disposable ones were way too expensive, So we switched to cloth. They were great. No, We didn’t wash them. Thank God, we had a service. We just put the dirty ones in plastic bags, And they picked them up and dropped off clean ones Right on our porch every two weeks. It made things so much easier. And you know, We didn’t have to worry about those summer rashes Because their little bottoms could breathe better. If you can afford the service, just do it. Or at least do it for the first six months. It’s even good for the environment. 5. JEFE No son gallinas Esperando un huevo. ¡A trabajar! Chorus: ¡Chingado!

And in that city the houses of the dead are left empty, if the dead are famous enough; by day the living pay to see if dust is all that befalls the lives they left behind. Coating even the glassed-in waistcoat in time, coloring the air of the room stripped bare, down four stories of twisted stair it falls, down on the dictionary no longer there. Empty your pockets, empty your hearts, that empty upper room exhorts. Forget the scrap of paper with the missing word for what’s missing— go home to your rented room. Go on. Six cramped quills, one elbow chair, missing a leg, held up all those years by Johnson’s willing it to hold his bulk—now even the “soul hath elbowroom” in that room where scribes scribbled out that quote. In that city the dead never want to get up, just as in life. What can we offer them? Just this dust to cover them deeper, kin to the soot that shadowed their days. Kiss from a wife who no longer wanted to be touched— love, he held, regarded with passionate affection, like one sex to the other, first; or, second, made do with the affection of a friend; or managed merely parental tenderness, third; or, fourth, no more than pleasure with, delighting in; or, fifth, no less than the reverent unwillingness to offend. O had a long sound, as in alone. Her opium. On clean-shirt day he would pay a visit to his wife. Pack meant large bundle of any thing—“on your head a pack of sorrows.” Quiet. The square just off Fleet Street so quiet Carlyle got lost on his way there. Remember the garret floorboards’ complaint, the muffled ruffling of pigeons just overhead? Such silence we fell into stair by stair, the house to ourselves. Tired of London, he claimed, and one was tired of life. Were we just tired? Under the low ceiling as below deck, up where no angle was true, we sank in deeper silence, valedictory, the way it took us in. Volumes of ancient air closed around us, blank, weighted by the latest dust. What had we come to the house of the dead to see? Something exotic? The zebra presented to the queen in 1726? Something exactly as it might have been? Did you yawn first, back among the living? You pulled me from traffic rushing downstream instead of up, that Zambezi best forded from stripe to painted stripe, a “zebra crossing.” I’d looked the wrong way.

“We all declare for liberty,” Lincoln said. “We use the word and mean all sorts of things: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Rifle the basket that thy neighbor brings.” The grizzled axman squinted at Honest Abe, The six feet four of him, gaunt, sad of face, The hands to split a log or cradle a babe, The cracked palm hat, the homespun of his race. “The wolf tears at the sheep’s throat: and the sheep Extols the shepherd for cudgeling tyranny; The wolf, convulsed with indignation deep, Accuses the shepherd of murdering liberty. “But the dictionary of the wolf is writ In words the rats of time chew bit by bit.”

We buried the problem. We planted a tree over the problem. We regretted our actions toward the problem. We declined to comment on the problem. We carved a memorial to the problem, dedicated it. Forgot our handkerchief. We removed all “unnatural” ingredients, handcrafted a locally-grown tincture for the problem. But nobody bought it. We freshly-laundered, bleached, deodorized the problem. We built a wall around the problem, tagged it with pictures of children, birds in trees. We renamed the problem, and denounced those who used the old name. We wrote a law for the problem, but it died in committee. We drove the problem out with loud noises from homemade 
instruments. We marched, leafleted, sang hymns, linked arms with the problem, got dragged to jail, got spat on by the problem and let out. We elected an official who Finally Gets the problem. We raised an army to corral and question the problem. They went door to door but could never ID. We made www.problem.com so You Can Find Out About the 
problem, and www.problem.org so You Can Help. We created 1-800-Problem, so you could Report On the problem, and 1-900-Problem so you could Be the Only Daddy That Really Turns That problem On. We drove the wheels offa that problem. We rocked the shit out of that problem. We amplified the problem, turned it on up, and blew it out. We drank to forget the problem. We inhaled the problem, exhaled the problem, crushed its ember under our shoe. We put a title on the problem, took out all the articles, conjunctions, and verbs. Called it “Exprmntl Prblm.” We shot the problem, and put it out of its misery. We swallowed daily pills for the problem, followed a problem fast, drank problem tea. We read daily problem horoscopes. Had our problem palms read by a seer. We prayed. Burned problem incense. Formed a problem task force. Got a problem degree. Got on the problem tenure track. Got a problem retirement plan. We gutted and renovated the problem. We joined the Neighborhood Problem Development Corp. We listened and communicated with the problem, only to find out that it had gone for the day. We mutually empowered the problem. We kissed and stroked the problem, we fucked the problem all night. Woke up to an empty bed. We watched carefully for the problem, but our flashlight died. We had dreams of the problem. In which we could no longer 
recognize ourselves. We reformed. We transformed. Turned over a new leaf. Turned a corner, found ourselves near a scent that somehow reminded us of the problem, In ways we could never Put into words. That Little I-can’t-explain-it That makes it hard to think. That Rings like a siren inside.

I. did you say August ponds ought to have been surrounded by September fences? but did you say September fences ought to have been climbed over by October peoples? what did you say for October padlocks that ought never to have been attached moreover to November handcuffs? II. You'll remember us for our dark Hungarian laughter That tickled when it laughed, that dug at the limelight Why, I'll send you a dark silver Hungarian coin From the mines that never saw the light of day yet Why, I'll send you a dime's worth of Hungarian damage That has been done to a cave that is full of Rhapsody Why, I'll send you a silver key to the cave of despair I'll send you a violet tonight, I'll send you a silver sword I'll send you a silver hammer that'll hammer night and day I'll send you a pail-ful of our kinds of blue revolutionary stars. III. Who are you? Weren't you their prisoner in the sedge dark? Where has been your search for freedom? Will you count the trees again in these dense woods Wherever you have been tonight? Will you look backwards where you have been? And tell me whoever you are. What have been your escapes? Nevertheless freedom is as ever an intense girl angel That speaks to me one in the inane wilderness Where has been your phantasmagoria? Are the dark trees at war with the darklike trees? Where has been your light Where has been your swordy well, Where has been your darklike table? Did you ever search for another star?