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We have cried often when we have given them the little victualling we had to give them; we had to shake them, and they have fallen to sleep with the victuals in their mouths many a time. (parent of children working at a textile mill, to an 1832 Parliamentary inquiry into child employment) 1. They cry for children too tired to cry for themselves, daughters twelve, eleven, eight—eyes shutting down as a grate’s banked coals shut down at midnight, in the rising damp called ‘home.’ Too tired to eat after eighteen hours feeding looms whose steel teeth grind insatiably, the girls will be offered up again at dawn. Yet they are the lucky ones, to work where skylights hold swatches of the unaffordable blue. Imagine these girls’ mine-trapped cousins, hauling black rocks on sledges up tunnels of black air: half-undressed, belted, harnessed, saturated with the oil-blackened water they crawl through pumping ‘the lifeblood of British industry.’ Flogged for talking, Margaret Comeley, aged nine, can sometimes close her mouth around a piece of muffin—if she manages to keep it from the rats, ‘so ravenous they eat the corks out of our oil-flasks.’ Sarah Gooder fills her mouth with song ‘when I’ve light, but not in the dark; I dare not then.’ 2. Here is a working girl so filled with light she is pure song: her sun-bright bodice shines in counterpoint with her blue overskirt, and, from her forehead’s crescent of white linen, tapering light blazes a white path down arms and wrists to folds of spread blue cloth, like moonlight piloting the tide’s refrains. A Dutch milkmaid, Tanneke Everpoel, lucky enough to live in the Delft house where Vermeer’s eye and brush could catch the spill of morning light as her brief peacefulness brimmed over, serves here as a celebrant— bread heaped up on the altar-like table, wine transubstantiated into milk whose brilliance seems the source of the room’s light she pours forever from the earthenware’s black core. His pose; yet—all hers—underneath it (and signalled in her fixed eyes’ unconcern for the beholder) such complete immersion in what she does, that she is all she does and it is she, this offering-up of day. And he? When he was forty, the Sun King invaded Holland. No one wanted art. In debt to his baker for three years’ worth of bread, Vermeer, according to his widow, falling ‘into a frenzy,’ passed ‘from being healthy’ in ‘a day or a day and a half ... to being dead,’ ‘the very great burden of his children ... so taken to heart.’ 3. Knowing the earth is closer to the sun in winter won’t revive the street person sleeping towards cold death in a bus shelter. Bread in a painting won’t cure stomach ache. So Margaret dragged her great burden of coal while Sarah sat terrified in the dark, and neither knew Vermeer’s poised working girl, broke bread with her, shared her breaking light. The painting stood by, helpless to save them or him, and looking at it now cannot help anyone. Yet, it can cry for them, as parents take their children’s grief to heart: the beads of salt, shimmering on the bread like diamonds, can be tears the two girls shed down where no light sang their preciousness. The cradled pitcher’s brim can be their hearth, since it (and not the sky’s cold mine of stars) pours out what cannot shelter us, but feeds a hunger no daily bread can fill: for light— light that, like coal, comes from our earth; hunger that, unlike grief, is inexhaustible.

Oh, there are times When all this fret and tumult that we hear Do seem more stale than to the sexton’s ear His own dull chimes. Ding dong! ding dong! The world is in a simmer like a sea Over a pent volcano,—woe is me All the day long! From crib to shroud! Nurse o’er our cradles screameth lullaby, And friends in boots tramp round us as we die, Snuffling aloud. At morning’s call The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun, And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one, Give answer all. When evening dim Draws round us, then the lonely caterwaul, Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall,— These are our hymn. Women, with tongues Like polar needles, ever on the jar; Men, plugless word-spouts, whose deep fountains are Within their lungs. Children, with drums Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass; Peripatetics with a blade of grass Between their thumbs. Vagrants, whose arts Have caged some devil in their mad machine, Which grinding, squeaks, with husky groans between, Come out by starts. Cockneys that kill Thin horses of a Sunday,—men, with clams, Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams From hill to hill. Soldiers, with guns, Making a nuisance of the blessed air, Child-crying bellman, children in despair, Screeching for buns. Storms, thunders, waves! Howl, crash, and bellow till ye get your fill; Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still But in their graves.

We are so honored that you are here, they said. We know that this is your homeland, they said. The admission price is five dollars, they said. Here is your button for the event, they said. It means so much to us that you are here, they said. We want to write an apology letter, they said. Tell us what to say.

Kitten curious, or roaring down drinks in Soho sumps, small hours tour buses, satellite station green rooms, or conked out in the bathtubs of motorway hotels, there you were, with muck-about kisses, sharking for the snappers, before hell opened up for you and weeping sores of after fame appeared, the haphazardry and dwindling after three limelit years, recognized with catcalls, wads of spit, a nightclub fist, the scant camaraderie melts fast, like your flat on Air Street, the Lhasa Apso pups, the wraps and lines of chang, the poster pull-outs, fake tan smiles. It’s paunch and palimony time on Lucifer’s leash. But for a madcap few who cling, thin soup, one pillow Britain is simmering with hatred, just for you.

Hark how the Mower Damon sung, With love of Juliana stung! While everything did seem to paint The scene more fit for his complaint. Like her fair eyes the day was fair, But scorching like his am’rous care. Sharp like his scythe his sorrow was, And withered like his hopes the grass. ‘Oh what unusual heats are here, Which thus our sunburned meadows sear! The grasshopper its pipe gives o’er; And hamstringed frogs can dance no more. But in the brook the green frog wades; And grasshoppers seek out the shades. Only the snake, that kept within, Now glitters in its second skin. ‘This heat the sun could never raise, Nor Dog Star so inflame the days. It from an higher beauty grow’th, Which burns the fields and mower both: Which mads the dog, and makes the sun Hotter than his own Phaëton. Not July causeth these extremes, But Juliana’s scorching beams. ‘Tell me where I may pass the fires Of the hot day, or hot desires. To what cool cave shall I descend, Or to what gelid fountain bend? Alas! I look for ease in vain, When remedies themselves complain. No moisture but my tears do rest, Nor cold but in her icy breast. ‘How long wilt thou, fair shepherdess, Esteem me, and my presents less? To thee the harmless snake I bring, Disarmèd of its teeth and sting; To thee chameleons, changing hue, And oak leaves tipped with honey dew. Yet thou, ungrateful, hast not sought Nor what they are, nor who them brought. ‘I am the Mower Damon, known Through all the meadows I have mown. On me the morn her dew distills Before her darling daffodils. And, if at noon my toil me heat, The sun himself licks off my sweat. While, going home, the evening sweet In cowslip-water bathes my feet. ‘What, though the piping shepherd stock The plains with an unnumbered flock, This scythe of mine discovers wide More ground than all his sheep do hide. With this the golden fleece I shear Of all these closes every year. And though in wool more poor than they, Yet am I richer far in hay. ‘Nor am I so deformed to sight, If in my scythe I lookèd right; In which I see my picture done, As in a crescent moon the sun. The deathless fairies take me oft To lead them in their dances soft: And, when I tune myself to sing, About me they contract their ring. ‘How happy might I still have mowed, Had not Love here his thistles sowed! But now I all the day complain, Joining my labour to my pain; And with my scythe cut down the grass, Yet still my grief is where it was: But, when the iron blunter grows, Sighing, I whet my scythe and woes.’ While thus he threw his elbow round, Depopulating all the ground, And, with his whistling scythe, does cut Each stroke between the earth and root, The edgèd steel by careless chance Did into his own ankle glance; And there among the grass fell down, By his own scythe, the Mower mown. ‘Alas!’ said he, ‘these hurts are slight To those that die by love’s despite. With shepherd’s-purse, and clown’s-all-heal, The blood I staunch, and wound I seal. Only for him no cure is found, Whom Juliana’s eyes do wound. ’Tis death alone that this must do: For Death thou art a Mower too.’

Water sheets on the old stone of the cellar walls, trickles out over the floor into little deltas of mud, worse every year, so that now I can see daylight at the footings, and upstairs the floors sometimes tremble and the clothes go damp in the closets. And sometimes I think the whole place is about to come down, and have begun to dream at night of moving, unaccountably sad to think of leaving this house which has possessed me now for eighteen years, in which one of us has died and two been born, for all its elegance of detail most everything not right in it, or long gone bad, nothing ever done which should have been, one hundred years and more of water rancid in the cellars, moldings never finished or else mitred crookedly, all the small and growing energies of dirt and rot wherever we care to look, whenever we do. And we do. But I dream also of the pine grove of my planting, which I know I love and which is the green truth of this place: in one day ten years ago I dug fourteen small trees, wrapped the roots in burlap, dragged them down from the top ridge of the hill, spaced them carefully, watered them each day for one whole season. Now they are twenty feet high, thick roots already at the cellar wall, vigorous and loud even in little winds, only the hemlock mournful and reluctant to do much in the way of increasing itself. But it is clear that if I do not freely leave this place, it will leave me—though, as Ray Reynolds says, digging at a powdery floor joist with his knife, there may be more here than I think, better than a two-by-six at least; and his blade slides two inches in and stops at what he calls the heartwood, meaning, as I take it, at the wood which has not yet given way.

The damselfly folds its wings over its body when at rest. Captured, it should not be killed in cyanide, but allowed to die slowly: then the colors, especially the reds and blues, will last. In the hand it crushes easily into a rosy slime. Its powers of flight are weak. The trout feeds on the living damselfly. The trout leaps up from the water, and if there is sun you see the briefest shiver of gold, and then the river again. When the trout dies it turns its white belly to the mirror of the sky. The heron fishes for the trout in the gravelly shallows on the far side of the stream. The heron is the exact blue of the shadows the sun makes of trees on water. When you hold the heron most clearly in your eye, you are least certain it is there. When the blue heron dies, it lies beyond reach on the far side of the river.

He started with the tune his mother had hummed in Ohio, nostalgia he’d carried for years, and by Sunday afternoon he had the words. A triumph, already; he whistled the banjo’s part. (Himself a sympathizer from the North, called copperhead, called traitor by his own kin.) Something lively, some git-up-and-git they’d wanted and didn’t he deliver— Miss Susan got seven encores the first night. That gave them their tune, their Negro walk-around— Look away, look away, look away, they sang. Vipers, that spring, spread thick on the ground.

Oh my, oh my, I lose myself I study atlases and cirrus paths in search of traces of it, of you of that thing, of that song I keep pressing my ear to the current of air to hear ... I hear it and it disappears It was all I wanted to do in this life to sense that phantom tap on my nerves, to allow myself to be hit by it, attacked, aroused until, as if someone else, I arise I dance my part in paradise ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I read that bees who’ve drunk imidacloprid can’t waggle to indicate to others where the best nectar is located (you and I also long to map for each other the sweetest suck of sap) Workers carry far less food back to the waiting hive. They wander, wobble can’t bring their way home alive The imidacloprid-imbibed can’t bring it back to the colony. Some hives collapse entirely. I desire to say that I, I would do it differently I would be the bee, bloomed with pesticide that still would shake out a wiggle like the finger’s signature on the iPad at checkout: not quite you, but still identity more like a wave than solid you yet enough to signify: There, there, in the far off field spiked acanthus, trumpets of datura in the abandoned lot on the corner of International and High the mystic assignation the golden throat of light: gorge, gorge, take your fill, I would cry before I too failed and my bumbling body lay down to die I’d dance my last dance to rescue the hive yes, I’d carry the amber whirrers out alive                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Or not. Perhaps I too would succumb to the corn syrup, chemical piped into our supply. (I, too, longing to find my way to you, would go off course.) Alas. There is still melody, rhythm, someone is streaking out in air, droning around the phonograph, which is the grooved heart valve of the black vinyl divine who is winding this universe. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Someone is dancing us. Will it be you?                                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dance, dance, as the hive collapses Dance, dance, while the colony disassembles Dance the occasion Dance the gorgeous design                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ inside the honey of our lit up veins                               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ between the stripes and streams of these swift rays

In Jinotega women greeted us with thousands of flowers roses it was hard to tell the petals on our faces and arms falling then embraces and the Spanish language which is a little like a descent of petals pink and orange Suddenly out of the hallway our gathering place AMNLAE the Asociación de Mujeres women came running seat yourselves dear guests from the north we announce a play a dance a play the women their faces mountain river Indian European Spanish dark-haired women dance in gray-green fatigues they dance the Contra who circles the village waiting for the young teacher the health worker (these are the strategies) the farmer in the high village walks out into the morning toward the front which is a circle of terror they dance the work of women and men they dance the plowing of the fields they kneel to the harrowing with the machetes they dance the sowing of seed (which is always a dance) and the ripening of corn the flowers of grain they dance the harvest they raise their machetes for the harvest the machetes are high but no! out of the hallway in green and gray come those who dance the stealth of the Contra cruelly they dance the ambush the slaughter of the farmer they are the death dancers who found the schoolteacher they caught the boy who dancing brought seeds in his hat all the way from Matagalpa they dance the death of the mother the father the rape of the daughter they dance the child murdered the seeds spilled and trampled they dance sorrow sorrow they dance the search for the Contra and the defeat they dance a comic dance they make a joke of the puppetry of the Contra of Uncle Sam who is the handler of puppets they dance rage and revenge they place the dead child (the real sleeping baby) on two chairs which is the bier for the little actor they dance prayer bereavement sorrow they mourn Is there applause for such theater? Silence then come let us dance together now you know the usual dance of couples Spanish or North American let us dance in twos and threes let us make little circles let us dance as though at a festival or in peace- time together and alone whirling stamping our feet bowing to one another the children gather petals from the floor to throw at our knees we dance the children too banging into us into each other and one small boy dances alone pulling at our skirts wait he screams stop! he tugs at the strap of our camera Stop! stop dancing I’m Carlos take a picture of me No! Now! Right now! because soon Look! See Pepe! even tomorrow I could be dead like him the music catches its breath the music jumping in the guitar and phonograph holds still and waits no no we say Carlos not you we put our fingers on his little shoulder we touch his hair but one of us is afraid for god’s sake take his picture so we lift him up we photo- graph him we pass him from one to another we photograph him again and again with each of us crying or laughing with him in our arms we dance