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We drive between lakes just turning green; Late June. The white turkeys have been moved A second time to new grass. How long the seconds are in great pain! Terror just before death, Shoulders torn, shot From helicopters. “I saw the boy being tortured with a telephone generator,” The sergeant said. “I felt sorry for him And blew his head off with a shotgun.” These instants become crystals, Particles The grass cannot dissolve. Our own gaiety Will end up In Asia, and you will look down in your cup And see Black Starfighters. Our own cities were the ones we wanted to bomb! Therefore we will have to Go far away To atone For the suffering of the stringy-chested And the short rice-fed ones, quivering In the helicopter like wild animals, Shot in the chest, taken back to be questioned.

for Emma Grace The day we picked our daughter up from camp, goldenrod lined the road, towheaded scouts bowing on both sides, the parting of macadam as we drove, the fields dry, the sky lacy with clouds. A farmer waved.  A horse shrugged its haughty head. We stopped for corn, just picked, and plums and kale, sampled pies, still warm, and tarts and honeyed bread. Sheets on a line ballooned out like a ship’s sail. Time stopped in those miles before we saw her. For eight days we hadn’t tucked her in or brushed her hair or watched her grow, the week a busy blur of grown-up bliss.  It came anyway, that uprush of fear—because somewhere a child was dead: at a market, a subway, a school, in a lunatic’s bed.

Quick swim up through my headlights: gold eye a startle in black: green swift glance raking mine. A full second we held each other, then gone. Gone. And how did I know what to call it? Lynx, the only possible reply though I’d never seen one. The car filling with it: moonlight, piñon: a cat’s acrid smell of terror. How quickly the gray body fled, swerving to avoid my light. And how often that sight returns to me, shames me to know how much more this fragment matters. More than the broad back of a man I loved. More than the image of my friend, cancer-struck, curled by her toilet. More than my regret for the child I did not have which I thought once would pierce me, utterly. Nothing beside that dense muscle, faint gold guard hairs stirring the dark. And if I keep these scraps of it, what did it keep of me? A flight, a thunder. A shield of light dropped before the eyes, pinned inside that magnificent skull only time would release. Split back, fade and reveal. Wind would open him. Sun would turn him commonplace: a knot of flies, a rib cage of shredded tendon, wasp-nest fragile. The treasure of him, like anything, gone. Even now, I thumb that face like a coin I cannot spend. If I ever lived, I lived in him, fishing the cold trout-thick streams, waking to snow, dying when he died, which is a comfort. I must say this. Otherwise, I myself do not exist. It looked at me a moment. A flash of green, of gold and white. Then the dark came down again between us. Once, I was afraid of being changed. Now that is done. The lynx has me in its eye. I am already diminished.

I I am driving; it is dusk; Minnesota. The stubble field catches the last growth of sun. The soybeans are breathing on all sides. Old men are sitting before their houses on car seats In the small towns. I am happy, The moon rising above the turkey sheds. II The small world of the car Plunges through the deep fields of the night, On the road from Willmar to Milan. This solitude covered with iron Moves through the fields of night Penetrated by the noise of crickets. III Nearly to Milan, suddenly a small bridge, And water kneeling in the moonlight. In small towns the houses are built right on the ground; The lamplight falls on all fours on the grass. When I reach the river, the full moon covers it. A few people are talking, low, in a boat.

My dear children, do you remember the morning When we climbed into the old Plymouth And drove west straight toward the Pacific? We were all the people there were. We followed Dylan's songs all the way west. It was Seventy; the war was over, almost; And we were driving to the sea. We had closed the farm, tucked in The flap, and were eating the honey Of distance and the word "there." Oh whee, we're gonna fly Down into the easy chair . We sang that Over and over. That's what the early Seventies were like. We weren't afraid. And a hole had opened in the world. We laughed at Las Vegas. There was enough gaiety For all of us, and ahead of us was The ocean. Tomorrow's The day my bride's gonna come . And the war was over, almost.

The sun climbed the rigging of a mackerel sky, with me and my daughter following west, and then the sudden, thick lashed, chestnut eye of that poor deer, flashed as we collided. Busted bumper, her bounding toward the pines— clean-limbed, light, and sapling-sound, she vanished. Stopping on the shoulder, I dreaded what damage my own poor dear and her thick-lashed, chestnut eyes had suffered, struck by their shared innocence and that awful force; but her beaming face, sunflower-broad, was filled by this thrill, with her eager as the deer that the day might move along, and the sun—without looking down—should keep to its climbing.

Baudelaire: "The dead, the poor dead, have their bad hours." But the dead have no watches, no grief and no hours. At first not smoking took all my time: I did it a little by little and hour by hour. Per diem. Pro bono. Cui bono? Pro rata. But the poor use English.Off and on. By the hour. "I'm sorry but we'll have to stop now." There tick but fifty minutes in the psychoanalytic hour. Vengeance is mine, yours, his or hers, ours, yours again (you-all's this time), and then (yikes!) theirs. I prefer ours. Twenty minutes fleeing phantoms at full tilt and then the cat coils herself like a quoit and sleeps for hours.

The veiled shape is a grandmother To the young boys working beside Her—packing stones from the field On the journey toward subsistence. Above them the Hindu Kush Disappears behind storm clouds the color of Milk in a metal pail. The grandfather is grinding Blades the way time sharpens Distrust—the stones fall From the mountains all winter— Almost always at night— The sound of them ganging up On starlight leaves a musical note Like jostled skewers. There’s nothing militant Here unless the noise of a shovel Is the voice of heresy— The missile enters the poem The way a horse defecates on an ant colony Simply because everything is Where it is when shit happens— If I were writing this poem I’d ignore the falcon hunting What small life escapes the heat signature Because it’s pushed by million-year- Old imperatives and unlike Us it has no off switch. This is where the poem Fails—where all literature fails— To thirst sufficiently to drink the last drip From the cold faucet attached To the executioner’s heart.

the drone was once a scrap of metal     the drone looks as if it might be a toy     the drone is not a toy     the drone could have been something other than a killing machine     the drone could have been a house      the drone could have been a spoon     the drone could have been a swing     the drone does not know who it is going to kill next     the drone is going to kill next     the drone has learned to disguise itself as a shard of sky     the drone’s soft hum is a disembodied echo    the drone was mistaken for a star once     the drone renders itself celestial     the drone scoffs at sovereignty     the drone asks what is a border if you can fly right over it? the drone was built by a man     the drone killed a man     & a woman     & a child     the drone killed a child     & did not see her face     the drone does not see a face     the drone sees a body     & then the body is gone.

Help me come up with a strategy to get through this white noise. — U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, November 2001 Are we on the ground now? Ally cells and I said operations. We cleared 50% of a wonderful friend and enduring opposition. Take the solid. Louder. We clearly are loud. We are the postal system. No evidence has been information. Attacking the caves. Are you on the ground enduring? A wonderful friend ramped it up. You ought to open your mail. Opposition element: the air. The talents work with precision. 84%. The population attacking the caves, the talents work with the caves and tunnels. Hiding in caves, wavering in caves and hiding in mosques. A wonderful friend on the ground. Freedom I said: the enduring ally cells. Interested in the view, in our aid sensitivities. 50% to the front of our effort adding that 80% are willing to play. Independent oper-oppo-sition forces that are rosy. So make assumptions on the ground. Are we on the ground now? Can be more than air. The target. The air liaison. Campaign with the bombing and entirely happy. Attacking the leaflets. We keep working hiding in hiding in caves and cowering in cowering in cowering in caves and I could say confidential areas. The mosques and rest efforts are mad. Execution in the targeting of democracy. Those risks culti-targeting to minimize the individual. An obligation to the spirit of enterprise. A war of roundup freezing worldwide, and proceeding on course. Training facilities, proceeding on course, freezing their guided munitions. A population is tons of struggle against evil. A civilized world of innocents in the mud, an enemy that’s on the ground for there is no neutral ever. No neutral homeland. For the first time first time first time in history ordinary busi-security bioterror to defend enemies with the no-ness of life. Confident in destruction / complete and cause / certain of the rightness of this time / in the right / man the victories / to comment for a freer world history / committee of evil / defeat the forces / we will fight and great coalition wherever they are an era of over flight right against terror basing global terror the global trade and lives of our world improve / the modern alliance / I like citizens / but rather than the dust settle it could mean / as acknowledged / the carpet bombs precision bombs / as long as 23 months and I said go to America on alert / get a softball to school if you work / take your child / game this afternoon / game or a soccer to the president’s going to go to the game / the fight/ our new baseball game / to help us in our task / force will sign terrorists tracking American citizens / to protect level warriors / the decibel from these shadows / open your mail louder