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If it hadn’t rained, we would’ve gone to the beach. — Phuc Tran If we were in infinity, we would be everywhere, even inside ourselves, as taste resides in the walnut, and the walnut resides in the shell. Then we would thrive inside the subjunctive, where nothing happens but dreams of being, as paradise dreams of its inferno, the inferno of cotton candy. If only the world had ripened, like a pear, it might have melted the mirror in me, delivering its softness to the hard road of the mind, sixty miles from town. And if our grammar were even to our heat, comma, conditional phrase, comma, we’d be addicted to the sentence, sentenced to an exile that sees, hears, and thinks, and is often mistaken for love. Trees are chronologies; every leaf shines, and in turning over it winks an eye: if,if, and then. The world is possible meaning; the world is possible, meaning: I might have been an elf, had I been elfin. But I am not an elf. I am a giant with tiny hands: would,could, and should. Had I been winged, I might have flown from industrial field to pastoral alley on great woolen wings, with the blue face of a bee. Then it would have been said, “He is repairing to his persona,” or “He is retiring to his future.” I’ll copy this by way of the stars, reflective. Get back to me by facsimile or dream of climbing a night ladder to the place of ideal size, near a town of simple affection. If we had been born, lived our lives, and died, we might have existed. On the side of darkness, infinity; on the other, a sixty watt bulb.

A shadow in the shape of a house slides out of a house and loses its shape on the lawn. Trees seek each other as the wind within them dies. Darkness starts inside of things but keeps on going when the things are gone. Barefoot careless in the farthest parts of the yard children become their cries.

I His holy slowly mulled over matter not all “delirium of delight” as were the forests of Brazil “Species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable” He was often becalmed in this Port Desire by illness or rested from species at billiard table As to Man “I believe Man… in the same predicament with other animals” II Cordilleras to climb—Andean peaks “tossed about like the crust of a broken pie” Icy wind Higher, harder Chileans advised eat onions for shortness of breath Heavy on him: Andes miners carried up great loads—not allowed to stop for breath Fossil bones near Santa Fé Spider-bite-scauld Fever Tended by an old woman “Dear Susan… I am ravenous for the sound of the pianoforte” III FitzRoy blinked— sea-shells on mountain tops! The laws of change rode the seas without the good captain who could not concede land could rise from the sea until—before his eyes earthquake— Talcahuana Bay drained out— all-water wall up from the ocean —six  seconds— demolished the town The will of God? Let us pray And now the Galápagos Islands— hideous black lava The shore so hot it burned their feet through their boots Reptile life Melville here later said the chief sound was a hiss A thousand turtle monsters drive together to the water Blood-bright crabs hunt ticks on lizards’ backs Flightless cormorants Cold-sea creatures— penguins, seals here in tropical waters Hell for FitzRoy but for Darwin Paradise Puzzle with the jig-saw gists beginning to fit IV Years… balancing probabilities I am ill, he said and books are slow work Studied pigeons barnacles, earthworms Extracted seeds from bird dung Brought home Drosera— saw insects trapped by its tentacles—the fact that a plant should secrete an acid acutely akin to the digestive fluid of an animal! Years till he published He wrote Lyell: Don’t forget to send me the carcass of your half-bred African cat should it die V I remember, he said those tropical nights at sea— we sat and talked on the booms Tierra del Fuego’s shining glaciers translucent blue clear down (almost) to the indigo sea (By the way Carlyle thought it most ridiculous that anyone should care whether a glacier moved a little quicker or a little slower or moved at all) Darwin sailed out of Good Success Bay to carcass- conclusions— the universe not built by brute force but designed by laws The details left to the working of chance “Let each man hope and believe what he can”

PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a.   Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b.   When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c.   He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d.   Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.

The first seated takes the chance he’ll be stood up. She’s getting on with the hope she may get off. One and one make one in this riddle. Or, more closely, comedy routine: first, impressions; second, observations. Impolite to have thirds. Bachelors and bachelorettes beware: more than tonight they can mess up your order. Who would go for the lobster expects the claws. No pets allowed, keep your shirt on, places this strict— like loony bins—require a jacket, sir. Mark sudden pauses, gaps in the flap, commas where a sutra might be

Today the date palms were pruned, the branches taken before the fruit ripened, before sweetness littered the sidewalks. The man who sawed them worked alone, a crane lifting him to the yellowed fronds. Beside his truck, he stood tall, American, a pensive pioneer. The top of each palm looked like the back of a man's head after a close-crop haircut, the neck cooled to a stubbly remembrance of hair, or was like a cat after being spayed, startled by a strange newness, pacing familiar rooms, darting, confused, and you (had you wished to console) are greeted with a barren gaze. The rubble of bark and fronds reminded me of Iraq, not the ruined bridges, or the surrendering soldiers' hands begging food, but the 16 million date palms, one per capita, lining the seams of the Tigris and Euphrates, a reminder of my own Libya and its 10 million date palms and the years of easy wealth that brought them neglect except in Huun, a magical city where they stuffed dates with almonds and sent them as far as Tanta and Oum Dourman. From Huun this story: a boy stands by a palm imploring his uncle to toss him a fistful of dates. Flustered by the boy's monotonous cries the uncle loses his feet, and as he falls to his death, cries down "Here nephew, I'm coming down with the dates!" So that's what we got from Huun, almond stuffed wonders and proverbial last words. There was another reminder, a tale of the prophet Muhammad living for months on water and coarse wheat bread, his wives protesting the austere measures of his faith. Muhammad, who praised honey and had a professed love for cantaloupes, and who once declared "the best meat is that which lines the bones," found in dates the solution he required. To his Arab followers, and to his wives, the fruit was "three skies above luxury," and as indispensable as water and air. I once had this dream of Whitman: I found him under one of the palms on Sherman Way gazing admiring. Though he had seen palms by the Gulf of Mexico, he had never tasted a date. So we drove to a supermarket, and he who had been thoughtful, even dignified, until then, began to sign and moan at the taste of "Araby's sugared dust clouds." When we walked the aisles he insisted on pushing the cart. The frozen foods did not surprise him since his Granny buried potatoes in the cold dirt of her homestead. Still I had to explain tofu, plastic, tacos, and the foods labeled free. He ran his hands caressing the waxed floor; "Smooth as a girl's wrist," he exclaimed. The bright fluorescent lights reminded hirn of the opera, and Walt sang a gravelly tune. The children sitting in carts reached for him, their hands were Lorca's butterflies on his beard. At the cashier he filled pockets with candy, and was shocked by the headlines of our news. Honda, Toyota, Saturn, Oldsmobile— in the parking lot the names waltzed on his tongue. At the fast food stand he ate heartily, the burger's slipperiness amused him, and at his clumsiness we both had a laugh. Then the talk grew quiet, the table stretching like the expanse of time dividing us; I felt he no longer wanted company, having begun to understand our world. Despite his old resentment of Blacks, and now my neighbors, the foreign-born Hispanics and their engines roaring through Balboa and Saticoy, and the Koreans' karoake— the baseline's muffled thuds, voices doused in Canadian Mist, and the off-key pleadings to the lover who never comes—, America remained to him luminous-industrial-fuming- sublime, and as he wished, beyond others' adjectives, beyond what anyone could have conceived. Mumbling a farewell, Whitman stood to leave. And with this my dream ended, Whitman wishing to depart and I holding on to his wrists. All day I wanted to hold his wide wrists. If you drive west of Alexandria your path will run through Alamain, Barani, and Matrouh. Then Egypt will end with a town on a steep hill called Sallum. If you go through the two checkpoints, Libya will unfold its dry pastures for you. On the Sallum hill there is a hotel where people stay to await relatives crossing the border or to hear word if it is safe to return. Across the road a tired bluegreen tea house sits like a bruise permanently on the verge of fading from the prairies' skin. You will also see the money changers— all teenage boys. With their right hands they will wave thick wads of money at your windshield, and with their left they will jostle to give you the best rate. The last time I stayed in Sallum few cars came from either direction, and among the boys fights flared with curses and stones hurled at brows. When the boys' rabble grew loud a man lazily stepped out of the tea house to call them bastards and sons of whores. This went on for hours until the sun settled in the middle of the sky, the boys taking shelter under a torn canvas shed, and the man to the tea house's dusty cool. Then just when all movement and noise seemed to surrender to the September wind and heat, four of the boys broke for a run racing—money still clutched in their hands— to a young date palm in the distance. Pressing shoulders and backs against it, they shook the palm until the season's first fruit began to rain. The other boys joined them, and soon the tea house emptied of the men slouching inside. Those were my brothers who cowered beneath the date palm to gather handfuls of fruit, rubbing each date clean on their sleeves, chewing softly to savor the taste as though it were a good omen, and rising to resume their lives, on their faces the smiles of those who once were blessed.

A fool I was to sleep at noon, And wake when night is chilly Beneath the comfortless cold moon; A fool to pluck my rose too soon, A fool to snap my lily. My garden-plot I have not kept; Faded and all-forsaken, I weep as I have never wept: Oh it was summer when I slept, It's winter now I waken. Talk what you please of future spring And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:— Stripp'd bare of hope and everything, No more to laugh, no more to sing, I sit alone with sorrow.

We said she was a negative image of me because of her lightness. She's light and also passage, the glory in my cortex. Daughter, where did you get all that goddess? Her eyes are Neruda's two dark pools at twilight. Sometimes she's a stranger in my home because I hadn't imagined her. Who will her daughter be? She and I are the gradual ebb of my mother's darkness. I unfurl the ribbon of her life, and it's a smooth long hallway, doors flung open. Her surface is a deflection is why. Harm on her, harm on us all. Inside her, my grit and timbre, my reckless.

Five daughters, in the slant light on the porch, are bickering. The eldest has come home with new truths she can hardly wait to teach. She lectures them: the younger daughters search the sky, elbow each other's ribs, and groan. Five daughters, in the slant light on the porch and blue-sprigged dresses, like a stand of birch saplings whose leaves are going yellow-brown with new truths. They can hardly wait to teach, themselves, to be called "Ma'am," to march high-heeled across the hanging bridge to town. Five daughters. In the slant light on the porch Pomp lowers his paper for a while, to watch the beauties he's begotten with his Ann: these new truths they can hardly wait to teach. The eldest sniffs, "A lady doesn't scratch." The third snorts back, "Knock, knock: nobody home." The fourth concedes, "Well, maybe not in church. . . " Five daughters in the slant light on the porch.

Les Filles du Roi (1668) French men are marrying Indian women. It will have to be stopped. Wives will have to be found. French wives for French men. And so the call goes out to all the unfortunates in France. Women without homes, without family, poor women, women alone. Women with no dowries to buy a husband. Becomes a Fille du Roi, a Daughter of the King. Each woman considers her options. The hardships she doesn’t know are preferable to the ones she knows too well. As a Daughter of the King, she will have a dowry, payable to her husband at the time of marriage. She will have a home, the possibility of children, a place in the community. Women come from Ile de France, from Normandy, 800 women in ten years. Les Filles du Roi. Une Fille du Roi, 1668 Marie Mazol is thirty three years old when she becomes a Daughter of the King. She will bring 300 livres to her marriage to Antoine Roy-Desjardins. She will have money for her own use as well, for expenses, they promise her. She thought it would go further, but what she takes with her are a coffer, a cap, a taffeta handkerchief, a shoe ribbon, a hundred needles, a comb, a pair of stockings, a pair of gloves, a pair of scissors, two knives, a thousand pins, a bonnet, and four laces. Thus prepared, she faces marriage to a man she doesn’t know, in a country she’s never seen. Les Filles du Roi—Afterwards The Daughters of the King become wives. But French and Indian keep marrying. Their descendants will say, “Scratch a Frenchman, find an Indian.”