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As I was going down impassive Rivers, I no longer felt myself guided by haulers: Yelping redskins had taken them as targets And had nailed them naked to colored stakes. I was indifferent to all crews, The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons When with my haulers this uproar stopped The Rivers let me go where I wanted. Into the furious lashing of the tides More heedless than children's brains the other winter I ran! And loosened Peninsulas Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub The storm blessed my sea vigils Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves That are called eternal rollers of victims, Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses! Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children The green water penetrated my hull of fir And washed me of spots of blue wine And vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook And from then on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent, Devouring the azure verses; where, like a pale elated Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks; Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight, Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres, The bitter redness of love ferments! I know the skies bursting with lightning, and the waterspouts And the surf and the currents; I know the evening, And dawn as exalted as a flock of doves And at times I have seen what man thought he saw! I have seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors, Lighting up, with long violet clots, Resembling actors of very ancient dramas, The waves rolling far off their quivering of shutters! I have dreamed of the green night with dazzled snows A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea, The circulation of unknown saps, And the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorous! I followed during pregnant months the swell, Like hysterical cows, in its assault on the reefs, Without dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys Could constrain the snout of the wheezing Oceans! I struck against, you know, unbelievable Floridas Mingling with flowers panthers' eyes and human Skin! Rainbows stretched like bridal reins Under the horizon of the seas to greenish herds! I have seen enormous swamps ferment, fish-traps Where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes! Avalanches of water in the midst of a calm, And the distances cataracting toward the abyss! Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers! Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs Fall down from gnarled trees with black scent! I should have liked to show children those sunfish Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish. —Foam of flowers rocked my drifting And ineffable winds winged me at times. At times a martyr weary of poles and zones, The sea, whose sob created my gentle roll, Brought up to me her dark flowers with yellow suckers And I remained, like a woman on her knees... Resembling an island tossing on my sides the quarrels And droppings of noisy birds with yellow eyes And I sailed on, when through my fragile ropes Drowned men sank backward to sleep! Now I, a boat lost in the foliage of caves, Thrown by the storm into the birdless air I whose water-drunk carcass would not have been rescued By the Monitors and the Hanseatic sailboats; Free, smoking, topped with violet fog, I who pierced the reddening sky like a wall, Bearing, delicious jam for good poets Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure, Who ran, spotted with small electric moons, A wild plank, escorted by black seahorses, When Julys beat down with blows of cudgels The ultramarine skies with burning funnels; I, who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues off The moaning of the Behemoths in heat and the thick Maelstroms, Eternal spinner of the blue immobility I miss Europe with its ancient parapets! I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands Whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer: —Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself, Million golden birds, o future Vigor? – But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter. Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea! If I want a water of Europe, it is the black Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight A squatting child full of sadness releases A boat as fragile as a May butterfly. No longer can I, bathed in your languor, o waves, Follow in the wake of the cotton boats, Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames, Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.

When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespear rose; Each change of many-colour’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain: His pow’rful strokes presiding Truth impress’d, And unresisted Passion storm’d the breast. Then Jonson came, instructed from the school, To please in method, and invent by rule; His studious patience, and laborious art, By regular approach essay’d the heart; Cold Approbation gave the ling’ring bays, For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise. A mortal born he met the general doom, But left, like Egypt’s kings, a lasting tomb. The Wits of Charles found easier ways to fame, Nor wish’d for Jonson’s art, or Shakespear’s flame, Themselves they studied, as they felt, they writ, Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. Vice always found a sympathetic friend; They pleas’d their age, and did not aim to mend. Yet bards like these aspir’d to lasting praise, And proudly hop’d to pimp in future days. Their cause was gen’ral, their supports were strong, Their slaves were willing, and their reign was long; Till Shame regain’d the post that Sense betray’d, And Virtue call’d Oblivion to her aid. Then crush’d by rules, and weaken’d as refin’d, For years the pow’r of tragedy declin’d; From bard, to bard, the frigid caution crept, Till Declamation roar’d, while Passion slept. Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread, Philosophy remain’d, though Nature fled. But forc’d at length her ancient reign to quit, She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of wit: Exulting Folly hail’d the joyful day, And pantomime, and song, confirm’d her sway. But who the coming changes can presage, And mark the future periods of the stage?— Perhaps if skill could distant times explore, New Behns, new Durfoys, yet remain in store. Perhaps, where Lear has rav’d, and Hamlet died, On flying cars new sorcerers may ride. Perhaps, for who can guess th’ effects of chance? Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance. Hard is his lot, that here by Fortune plac’d, Must watch the wild vicissitudes of taste; With ev’ry meteor of caprice must play, And chase the new-blown bubbles of the day. Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public voice. The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live. Then prompt no more the follies you decry, As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die; ’Tis yours this night to bid the reign commence Of rescu’d Nature, and reviving Sense; To chase the charms of Sound, the pomp of Show, For useful Mirth, and salutary Woe; Bid scenic Virtue form the rising age, And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage.

My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself —Ezekiel And into the heavens, as on a bright day after rain, there came the shapes of four creatures, and they each had the likeness of a man, and each man had four wings outstretched and each wing had four eyes emblazoned, wide open, given to weeping at the worlds they contained: an eye-world of light, of fire and air, of water and its mirror, heart and its first fear; and in each world were four names, entangled in its forest of letters, whereupon I could read: Dow Jones, Cargill, Chevron, and DeKalb of the frozen seed, bearing but once and giving up its need; and under each name were discovered four meanings, literal, figurative, rational, dim, and under each meaning a counter-meaning, with its likeness of Freud, Marx, Hegel, and Lacan; and the four figures passed as one overhead, their wingtips linked like molten silver joined. For I, Ezekiel, had been given to eat the very substance of God, and my eyes were open and my mouth spake, as spring opens winter and winter closes fall; and the earth turned rightly, to my senses sweet. Son of man, they called me, a proverb and a sign. Say: I am a sign of the city, the cauldron where men burn down to desire. Say: I am the proverb of nothing and one, boiling over the fire, rising out of belief and falling, like a tyrant, out of derision alone. And lo, a likeness, as of the appearance of fire, the error of presence, of nothing as one, and lo, another likeness, the appearance of water, the error of absence, of something as none; for water surrounds all shapes that enter but has no shape of its own, and fire is the shape of ruin alone. For the princes of the sea shall cast their garments upon the land’s end: their scholar’s robes, sharkskin suits, and alligator shoes, their Nikes, Reeboks, and Chuvashian mittens knitted by the children of shepherds, by tinsmiths and ladies’ men, in the dark at the back of the store; for the princes of fire consume what they love, with the reckless ambition of gods. Yea, as I spake to dry bones that lay upon the earth, they danced into being, and chattered, one and one, down the hallways of my desert, the thresholds of my river. For the Lord builds ruined palaces and plants desolation, he receives what is absent; possesses all that is gone.

1 Claude says he, too, was given the tracks and not the train, the way — and not the way out, not the beyond beyond that bend, or the next. The place they call Drybridge — for the waterless bed of rails — where on the banks, you grow up learning more news from hoboes than from the mailman. But you know nothing of the train as it passes behind the backs of grander houses, gutted warehouses, chained dogs, as it grazes an alien grid of fences — of stone, metal, and chain-link. Or that when it passes beneath the underside of a bridge, a boy your own age waves the way you do, and that there is a horse doesn’t lift its head, and one that does, only to lower it again. 2 You are a grown man when the train comes to a scalding stop, and a lantern swings down the road. A man has been killed, they call out from behind the light’s aura, and would you come see what you can tell of him by what’s left. You do know his hat, and that burn scar on the back of his hand. What you know of his wife you do not say and will not even the next night when you sit up with the body in the house he wanted that much shut of, her voice rigid as its walls while the train you hear out there in the darkness passes by the way it always does, as though the same, the very same, and, again, on the time it will this night be able to keep.

At the drycleaners I stand in line, my feet shuffling weight from side to side, impatience all over me while the woman, light brown, with her Creole story drones on. In New Orleans none would notice. She’s exotic in Baltimore, a dawn bird everything hears. Even the clerk leans into her tale, clucking softly. When people behind me cough, she won’t be rushed. She’s got her whole story to go. Soon there’s a man she never married, her mother opposed, far away still, and he went into a bar, wrong place, wrong color, wrong words, maybe, a good man. He’ll never come away of there, not comin’ home, geraniums on the back porch, and not replace the bad tire her Honda has, who could always be telling her what time does in the kitchen if she stand half naked letting his dog go on out. So let me pay you for him, give you money because you is nice and I remember, her nearly singing voice sighs. The sleeved pants, two shirts hang on the brass ring, all finished, unclaimed, the stiffened stains gone away. The perfectly starched cloth a redemption so beautiful it might be the linen of royalty, but small for a man two of us will think of as sleep scuffs house walls like tide under a boat. How nice they are, these women doing the little one person can for another which is, in the end, a wash of memorable words that leave you standing.

A Poet am I neither born nor bred, But to a witty poet married: Whose brain is fresh and pleasant as the Spring, Where Fancies grow and where the Muses sing. There oft I lean my head, and listening, hark, To catch his words and all his fancies mark: And from that garden show of beauties take Whereof a posy I in verse may make. Thus I, that have no gardens of my own, There gather flowers that are newly blown.

Ya kut unta pishno ma* Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place, Iowa City, Ioway Where green-headed mallards walk the streets day and night, and defecate on sidewalks. Greasy meat bags in wetsuits, disguise themselves as pets and are free as birds. Maybe Indians should have thought of that? Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Maybe you would have left us alone, if we put on rubber bills, and rubber feet, Quacked instead of complained, Swam instead of danced waddled away when you did what you did… Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to the Place The “Jewel of the Midwest” Where ghosts of ourselves Dance the sulphur trails. Fumes emerge continuous from the mouths of Three-faced Deities who preach, “We absolve joy through suffering.” Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place where in 1992, up washed Columbus again like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals. His spin doctors rewrite his successes “After 500 years and 25 million dead, One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics 49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.” Each minute burns the useful and useless alike Sing Hallelujah Praise the Lord Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma And when you foreigners build your off-world colonies and relocate in outer space This is what we will do We will dance, We will dance, We will dance to a duck’s tune. Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma

I Said the Duck to the Kangaroo, ‘Good gracious! how you hop! Over the fields and the water too, As if you never would stop! My life is a bore in this nasty pond, And I long to go out in the world beyond! I wish I could hop like you!’ Said the Duck to the Kangaroo. II ‘Please give me a ride on your back!’ Said the Duck to the Kangaroo. ‘I would sit quite still, and say nothing but “Quack,” The whole of the long day through! And we’d go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee, Over the land, and over the sea;— Please take me a ride! O do!’ Said the Duck to the Kangaroo. III Said the Kangaroo to the Duck, ‘This requires some little reflection; Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck, And there seems but one objection, Which is, if you’ll let me speak so bold, Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold, And would probably give me the roo- Matiz!’ said the Kangaroo. IV Said the Duck, ‘As I sate on the rocks, I have thought over that completely, And I bought four pairs of worsted socks Which fit my web-feet neatly. And to keep out the cold I’ve bought a cloak, And every day a cigar I’ll smoke, All to follow my own dear true Love of a Kangaroo!’ V Said the Kangaroo, ‘I’m ready! All in the moonlight pale; But to balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady! And quite at the end of my tail!’ So away they went with a hop and a bound, And they hopped the whole world three times round; And who so happy,—O who, As the Duck and the Kangaroo?.

We remember the rabbit when we see the duck, but we cannot experience both at the same time —E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion WHAT do you remember? When I looked at his streaky glasses, I wanted to leave him.And before that? He stole those cherries for me at midnight. We were walking in the rain and I loved him. And before that? I saw him coming toward me that time at the picnic, edgy, foreign. But you loved him? He sat in his room with the shades drawn, brooding.But you loved him? He gave me a photo of himself at sixteen, diving from the pier. It was summer. His arms outstretched.And before that? His mother was combing his soft curls with her fingers and crying. Crying. Is that what he said? He put on the straw hat and raced me to the barn.What did he tell you? Here’s the dried rose, brown as tobacco. Here’s the letter that I tore and pasted. The book of blank pages with the velvet cover.But do you still love him? When I rub the nap backwards, the colors lift, bristle.What do you mean? Sometimes, when I’m all alone, I find myself stroking it.

We remember the rabbit when we see the duck, but we cannot experience both at the same time. —E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion What do you remember? When I looked at his streaky glasses, I wanted to leave him.And before that? He stole those cherries for me at midnight. We were walking in the rain and I loved him. And before that? I saw him coming toward me that time at the picnic, edgy, foreign. But you loved him? He sat in his room with the shades drawn, brooding.But you loved him? He gave me a photo of himself at sixteen, diving from the pier. It was summer. His arms outstretched.And before that? His mother was combing his soft curls with her fingers and crying. Crying. Is that what he said? He put on the straw hat and raced me to the barn.What did he tell you?