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You can see the face of everything, and it is white— plaster, nightmare, adobe, anemia, cold— turned to the east. Oh closeness to life! Hardness of life! Like something in the body that is animal—root, slag-ends— with the soul still not set well there— and mineral and vegetable! Sun standing stiffly against man, against the sow, the cabbages, the mud wall! —False joy, because you are merely in time, as they say, and not in the soul! The entire sky taken up by moist and steaming heaps, a horizon of dung piles. Sour remains, here and there, of the night. Slices of the green moon, half-eaten, crystal bits from false stars, plaster, the paper ripped off, still faintly sky-blue. The birds not really awake yet, in the raw moon, streetlight nearly out. Mob of beings and things! —A true sadness, because you are really deep in the soul, as they say, not in time at all!

Imagine you wake up with a second chance: The blue jay hawks his pretty wares and the oak still stands, spreading glorious shade. If you don't look back, the future never happens. How good to rise in sunlight, in the prodigal smell of biscuits - eggs and sausage on the grill. The whole sky is yours to write on, blown open to a blank page. Come on, shake a leg! You'll never know who's down there, frying those eggs, if you don't get up and see.

—“mu” forty-eighth part— “While we’re alive,” we kept repeating. Tongues, throats, roofs of our mouths bone dry, skeletons we’d someday be... Panicky masks we wore for effect more than effect, more real than we’d admit... No longer wanting to know what soul was, happy to see shadow, know touch... Happy to have sun at our backs, way led by shadow, happy to have bodies, block light... Afternoon sun lighting leaf, glint of glass, no matter what, about to be out of body it seemed... Soon to be shadowless we thought, said we thought, not to be offguard, caught out. Gray morning we meant to be done with, requiem so sweet we forgot what it lamented, teeth turning to sugar, we grinned • Day after day of the dead we were desperate. Dark what the night before we saw lit, bones we’d eventually be... At day’s end a new tally but there it was, barely begun, rock the clock tower let go of, iridescent headstone, moment’s rebuff... Soul, we saw, said we saw, invisible imprint. No one wanted to know what soul was... Day after day of the dead we were deaf, numb to what the night before we said moved us, fey light’s coded locale... I fell away, we momentarily gone, deaf but to brass’s obsequy, low brass’s croon begun. I fell away, not fast, floated, momentary mention an accord with the wind, day after day of the dead the same as day before day of the dead... “No surprise,” I fell away muttering, knew no one would hear, not even me • We wore capes under which we were in sweaters out at the elbow. Arms on the table, we chewed our spoons... Mouthing the blues, moaned an abstract truth, kept eating. The dead's morning-after buffet someone said it was. Feast of the unfed said someone else... What were we doing there the exegete kept asking, adamant, uninvited, morose... Elbows in the air like wings, we kept eating, rolled our eyes, kept shoveling it in... Day after day of the dead we were them. We ate inexhaustibly, ate what wasn't there, dead no longer dying of thirst, hung over, turned our noses up to what was ________________ It was me, we were it, insensate, sugared sweat what what we drank tasted like. Even so, the tips of our tongues tasted nothing, we sipped without wincing... We ate cakes, we ate fingernail soup, a new kind of gazpacho, no one willing to say what soul was... Knucklebone soufflé we ate, we ate gristle, eyes we took from flies flying backward a kind of caviar, none of us wanting to say what soul was

Blue numbers on my bedside clock tell I forgot to change the hour. This sets routines on haywire. Like a domestic goat staked to its circle of earth. I don’t do well untethered. I have no hunger for early dinner, become confused by the sound of children who seem out too late for a school night. They’ve found an extra helping of daylight to romp on new grass and can’t contain themselves, strip off jackets, scatter like a rag of ponies. Whatever time says, their joy insists on springing forward.

September breeze, an island chill, the streets so quiet . . . still, seem wider now but soon they fill with gulls that stride and squawk and boldly walk the middle of the road— I wish I understood gull-talk perhaps they, too, feel harmony no crowds, no noise now once again just sand, waves, sky, and sea . . . just gulls and me

After three months, Virginia is still a frontier. Late at night, I close the door on my husband practicing Mozart, the dishpan fills and the network affiliates sign off one by one. Now the country stations, tuning up like crickets on radios in scattered valley kitchens: Har yall this evenin folks! (Wanting to say ‘I’m real fine’ I whisper ‘Wow.’) Got your Green Hill chicory perkin’? An army of women, straightened and ironed and blued like Picasso’s ironer—jerking coffeecups back with one gesture, hips pressed to sinks. Their suspendered husbands are reading—the paper? the Bible? And it’s Jesus for you and for me, till midnight—the anthem— and one soaped hand jerks out, and their lighted lives recede to kitchens on the moon’s dark side, Mozart rising . . . Daytimes, in post office, gas station, greasy spoon, I don’t see them anywhere, it makes me nervous. Black faces down here look “colored.” I am afraid of the other, red faces. Take my first job in Boston, the outgoing typist said, ‘You’ve got to know the foms, we use so many foms.’ And I said O why farms? I thought law firms had torts. A tort, I thought, was like vous avez tort. But I was wrong about the farms, and after the Cardinal’s Vietnam speech one of the girls said, ‘Think you’re smat with that accent?’ Still, nothing soothes me, sometimes, like American voices, softened with distance, with nearness, as murmurs in a darkened Greyhound: ‘It sure has been a scorcher.’ ‘Where you folks from?’ I keep yawning, lightworlds off in the dark . . . Sometimes my lonesome standard English sleeps: The varied and ample land, the North and South in the light, and the voices of Earth and Moon swell in my helmet with prairie inflections, soft twangs of outer speech— ‘You’re looking real good,’ says Earth ‘—ain’t that somethin’?’ ‘Roger. No sweat. Out.’

When you wake up after twelve hours The stove is cold, there's ice in the water bucket — clouds outside and snow, the noise of a crow, The only sound; until your wife cries From an upper bunk, Honey, I'd like some coffee. Luther chuckles. I nod, excuse myself  for the men's room Next to me stretches a teacher Who once warned me not to get married Too early. Elderly now, but having done well In real estate as a second career. He says Well, well, as if  he can't recall my name. But buys me a drink and talks of  his wayward Daughter. When he mentions her married last name I tell him I have met her, but leave off at that    . . . He squints like a badger. In my wife's family, he resumes, After a jostling by a drunken salesman, there's a Sort of stupid gene that runs through the whole outfit, Being half  Finnish, half  Dutch — or maybe something Cancelled something    . . .    I notice a protuberance, a small growth At the edge of  his eye, hanging like a broken thread I always thought, I say, your daughter had a charming Personality. He hunches his shoulders. Waking to dread, The debts of  dread — but I couldn't help him. Neither did I want to. On the way out I spot my first wife chatting with a small-time gangster — She flutters a wave my way, a Victorian flutter

Whether the harborline or the east shoreline consummated it was nobody’s biz until you got there, eyelids ashimmer, content with one more dispensation from blue above. And just like we were saying, the people began to show some interest in the mud-choked harbor. It could be summer again for all anyone in our class knew. Yeah, that’s right. Bumped from our dog-perch, we’d had to roil with the last of them. It’s taken a while since I’ve been here, but I’m resolved. What, didn’t I print, little piles of notes, slopes almost Sicilian? Here is my friend: Socks for comfort (now boys) will see later. Did they come? The inner grocery had to take three sets of clips away. Speaking to him of intricate family affairs. I’m not what you think. Stay preconscious. It’s just the “flooding of the council.” No need to feel afraid.

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials and in the pastures let the rough winds fly. As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness. Direct on them two days of warmer light to hale them golden toward their term, and harry the last few drops of sweetness through the wine. Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter; who lives alone will live indefinitely so, waking up to read a little, draft long letters, and, along the city's avenues, fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, Bright eyes, accomplish’d shape, and lang’rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Faded the shape of beauty from my arms, Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise – Vanish’d unseasonably at shut of eve, When the dusk holiday – or holinight Of fragrant-curtain’d love begins to weave The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight, But, as I’ve read love’s missal through to-day, He’ll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.