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Gold shed upon suckling gold, The time of the bole blackens, Of the dark mounted through dapple, While in the sealed apple The seed cradled toward cold. A gold on gold spent, Put by from an elm in its years Now its gilded of days, Over turf’s dishevelment; Where all which is green sickens, All the fresh shall be sere. All which is green sickens, And it is but for a time Those embered veinings blaze A year’s delirium; Or neared of other space, Unportioned azure shall close One of more, and which is, One which goes. Let the little pupils that will, Of vision, gaze for salt To whet their gazing, wit In one weather is high From burrow and lair, by Nether providences’ default An all’s accrued. And apposite, beyond Such primer beholdings, has Its long accounting known The beetle’s morsel thus Was rich, and the slug’s bed on The oak’s generations, deep Over the lark’s bones. In slough of Edens fast Wit in one weather shall stand, While millennia nibble at The sensual apple Toppled it net, Plenty in the palm of the hand, And the fallen not fallen, not lost From out its certitude— For our unbeggaring Has been gross. Few and late To cherish an immoderate Wish, hope’s calculus, Love’s hope; few to miss, From natural tally thrust, In the lime-girdled space Of choice, where alone Man can abandon what Is only his own; And in cold and tarrying Their rearisers sleep: While to the granite cheek Light’s purples bring Infinite their ministering, And past our finial And ragged crests, to keep Time’s ambient stood, Propose horizons from Their shadowy quarries; while, In an unwandered wood, Or under the indifferent foot, Is let fall, let fall a fruit, Through eternal leisures down, For but time’s unravelling.

A wind sways the pines, And below Not a breath of wild air; Still as the mosses that glow On the flooring and over the lines Of the roots here and there. The pine-tree drops its dead; They are quiet, as under the sea. Overhead, overhead Rushes life in a race, As the clouds the clouds chase; And we go, And we drop like the fruits of the tree, Even we, Even so.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

Heart, oh heart, I sit here writing your name on pieces of paper, folded, hidden, misplaced . . . found again. There is the element of saying and there is the element of making: one needn’t choose. I am singing the dream out from the ice, asking it to carry me like a horse or a river, down and away. This day, here in paned-glass sun: the young waitress shaking out her apron and retying it flat across her stomach— a bit of vanity—her hair swept off her neck, crash of a milk bottle on the granite counter, cream spread in a mild pool toward the rim, and the roots of habit and longing briefly seized by the mind. So noisy here! The sound echoes out of years, brought to this showing forth, unrehearsed. It seems we wake and find ourselves repeating, embodying the ancient gestures by which we recognize ourselves completed. Not one of us could be born and invent life—it must show through us— the arm flung in the air, the coffee poured out, and down the street, someone hurrying by, head down against the wind. And a man and a woman come to an old grief, carved in them, carved into them —the old way of water wearing rock— by law, and the hatred between them is equal to the hope neither will release. Each wants to be whole, to embody all of time, when nothing in this world is whole, and this is by law. When my father said bitterly to my mother:you have changed, he meant, without meaning to say, how she had changed him. A man holds his head down against the wind. Yet the wind fills him with the dust of temples, the breath of the dead. The dream of the light inside the branches— a gleam of wet, glimmer that is a bud, the leaf within the bud. The photographer comes inside and closes the lens of his camera. Then he is the lens. Then my eye is the light. This is the element of saying. The young waitress flings a paper cup behind her, into the trash can. That is a saying. The cream swirled into the coffee, the sugar dissolving, disembodied, and the body of the manager disappears, swallowed into a doorway. The element of making is slow, uncertain as a temple, a falling forward, stitching back, like a stone wall, like the panes in an arched window, like a repetition chosen beyond necessity. Yet somehow we have seen all this before— the girl in the fur hat speaking syrup into a phone; the falseness of her charm is an ancient imposter, familiar and therefore true. A door is opened and falls closed. Suddenly at every table someone looks down and is reading— books, newspapers, calendars, reading tea leaves, reading bones. A woman in a periwinkle jacket: I am reading her shoulders as the day introspects. In dream the passive construction and the past perfect tense prevail: she was being pushed on a swing. The woman with many television credits gazes out the window, heavy with years, forgetting herself, forgetting sorrow, the false husband, the crippled child, the old plots forgetting, and it is suddenly lovely, as free as something read or dreamed; the young waitress with sun on her face—her unblemished face—looks up, from the middle of eternity, her desire immaculate in the moment. When a word is beautiful above all others—your name— when a woman appears as a bird of prey and we turn away, hoping not to be recognized—oh heart!— when the light on the branches flares in a window with no sky, this is old story reading us, these are springs from words laid down before and ahead of us, and in the moment we are making an answer.

“Southern Tradition of Eating Dirt Shows Signs of Waning” —headline, New York Times , 2/14/84 tra dition wanes I read from North ern South: D.C. Never ate dirt but I lay on Great- grandma’s grave when I was small. “Most cultures have passed through a phase of earth- eating most pre valent today among rural Southern black women.” Geo phagy

Where did you get such a dirty face, My darling dirty-faced child? I got it from crawling along in the dirt And biting two buttons off Jeremy’s shirt. I got it from chewing the roots of a rose And digging for clams in the yard with my nose. I got it from peeking into a dark cave And painting myself like a Navajo brave. I got it from playing with coal in the bin And signing my name in cement with my chin. I got it from rolling around on the rug And giving the horrible dog a big hug. I got it from finding a lost silver mine And eating sweet blackberries right off the vine. I got it from ice cream and wrestling and tears And from having more fun than you’ve had in years.

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Voices of play and pleasure after day, Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. *        *        *        *        * About this time Town used to swing so gay When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees, And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,— In the old times, before he threw away his knees. Now he will never feel again how slim Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands, All of them touch him like some queer disease. *        *        *        *        * There was an artist silly for his face, For it was younger than his youth, last year. Now, he is old; his back will never brace; He's lost his colour very far from here, Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race And leap of purple spurted from his thigh. *        *        *        *        * One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg, After the matches carried shoulder-high. It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg, He thought he'd better join. He wonders why. Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts. That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg, Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts, He asked to join. He didn't have to beg; Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years. Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt, And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes; And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears; Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits. And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers. *        *        *        *        * Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal. Only a solemn man who brought him fruits Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul. *        *        *        *        * Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes, And do what things the rules consider wise, And take whatever pity they may dole. Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes Passed from him to the strong men that were whole. How cold and late it is! Why don't they come And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

Belfast, Winter, 1976 When we stop where you lived, the house has thickened, the entry level to the wall with bricks, as though it could keep you out. Again the dream has fooled you into waking and we have walked out past ourselves, through the windows to be remembered in the light of closed rooms as a series of impositions across the arms of a chair, that woman’s face startled out of us so it lingers along a brick front. You are leading me back to the burned arcade where you said I stood with you in your childhood last night, your childhood which includes me now as surely as the look of that missing face between the rows of houses. We have gone so far into your past that nothing reflects us. No sun gleams from the glassless frame where a room burned, though the house stayed whole. There is your school, your church, the place you drank cider at lunch time. New rows of houses are going up. Children play quietly in a stairwell. Walking back, you tell the story of the sniper’s bullet making two clean holes in the taxi, how the driver ducked and drove on like nothing happened. No pain passed through you; it did not even stop the car or make you live more carefully. Near the check point we stop talking, you let the hands rub your clothes against your body. You seem to be there, all there. Watching, I am more apart for the sign of dismissal they will give me, thinking a woman would not conceal as I have, the perfect map of this return where I have met and lost you willingly in a dead and living place. Now when you find me next in the dream, this boundary will move with us. We will both come back.

A faint smell of urine embroidering that bouquet of mold the big cushions give off days the fog won’t lift, and a shelf of bone growing out over the eyelids like evening’s shadow across a field of corn— The whole parade leaking out from your shoulders, bequeathing to the groin a pang of distance; then that metallic taste in the mouth and a voice you had let yourself believe was dead close now by your ear, intimate and sweet: Well, well, well, look what we have here.

On village green whose smooth and well-worn sod, Cross pathed, with many a gossip’s foot is trod; By cottage door where playful children run, And cats and curs sit basking in the sun; Where o’er an earthen seat the thorn is bent, Cross-armed and back to wall poor William leant His bonnet all awry, his gathered brow, His hanging lip and lengthened visage show A mind but ill at ease. With motions strange His listless limbs their wayward postures change; While many a crooked line and curious maze With clouted shoon he on the sand portrays. At length the half-chewed straw fell from his mouth, And to himself low spoke the moody youth. ‘How simple is the lad and reft of skill, Who thinks with love to fix a woman’s will: Who every Sunday morn, to please her sight, Knots up his neckcloth gay and hosen white; Who for her pleasure keeps his pockets bare, And half his wages spends on pedlar’s ware; When every niggard clown or dotard old, Who hides in secret nooks his oft-told gold, Whose field or orchard tempts, with all her pride, At little cost may win her for his bride! While all the meed her silly lover gains, Is but the neighbours’ jeering for his pains. On Sunday last, when Susan’s banns were read, And I astonished sat with hanging head, Cold grew my shrinking frame, and loose my knee, While every neighbour’s eye was fixed on me. Ah Sue! when last we worked at Hodge’s hay, And still at me you mocked in wanton play — When last at fair, well pleased by chapman’s stand, You took the new-bought fairing from my hand — When at old Hobb’s you sung that song so gay, ‘Sweet William,’ still the burthen of the lay, — I little thought, alas! the lots were cast, That thou shouldst be another’s bride at last; And had, when last we tripped it on the green, And laughed at stiff-backed Rob, small thought I ween, Ere yet another scanty month was flown To see thee wedded to the hateful clown. Ay, lucky churl! more gold thy pockets line, But did these shapely limbs resemble thine, I’d stay at home and tend the household gear, Nor on the green with other lads appear. Ay, lucky churl! no store thy cottage lacks, And round thy barn thick stand the sheltered stacks. But did such features coarse my visage grace, I’d never budge the bonnet from my face. Yet let it be; it shall not break my ease, He best deserves who doth the maiden please. Such silly cause no more shall give me pain, Nor ever maiden cross my rest again. Such grizzled suitors with their taste agree, And the black fiend may take them all for me!’ Now through the village rose confused sounds, Hoarse lads, and children shrill, and yelping hounds. Straight every housewife at her door is seen, And pausing hedgers on their mattocks lean. At every narrow lane and alley’s mouth Loud-laughing lasses stand, and joking youth. A bridal band tricked out in colours gay, With minstrels blithe before to cheer the way, From clouds of curling dust that onward fly, In rural splendour break upon the eye. As in their way they hold so gaily on, Caps, beads, and buttons, glancing in the sun, Each village wag with eye of roguish cast, Some maiden jogs and vents the ready jest; While village toasts the passing belles deride, And sober matrons marvel at their pride. But William, head erect, with settled brow, In sullen silence viewed the passing show; And oft he scratched his pate with careless grace, And scorned to pull the bonnet o’er his face; But did with steady look unaltered wait, Till hindmost man had passed the churchyard gate, Then turned him to his cot with visage flat, Where honest Lightfoot on the threshold sat. Up leaped the kindly beast his hand to lick, And for his pains received an angry kick. Loud shuts the door with harsh and thundering din; The echoes round their circling course begin, From cot to cot, church tower, and rocky dell, It grows amain with wide progressive swell, And Lightfoot joins the coil with long and piteous yell.