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...at the still point, there the dance is. —T. S. Eliot The errand into the maze, Emblem, the heel’s blow upon space, Speak of the need and order the dancer’s will. But the dance is still. For a surmise of rest, over the flight of the dial, Between shock of the fall, shock of repose, The flesh in its time delivered itself to the trial, And rose. Suffrance: the lapse, the pause, Were the will of the dance— The movement-to-be, charmed from the shifts of the chance, Intent on its cause. And the terrible gift Of the gaze, blind on its zenith, the wreath Of the throat, the body’s unwearied uplift, Unmaking and making its death, Were ripeness, and theme for return: Were rest, in the durance of matter: The sleep of the musing Begetter And the poise in the urn.

Class is over, the teacher and the pianist gone, but one dancer in a pale blue leotard stays to practice alone without music, turning grand jetes through the haze of late afternoon. Her eyes are focused on the balancing point no one else sees as she spins in this quiet made of mirrors and light— a blue rose on a nail— then stops and lifts her arms in an oval pause and leans out a little more, a little more, there, in slow motion upon the air.

Frame within frame, the evolving conversation is dancelike, as though two could play at improvising snowflakes’ six-feather-vaned evanescence, no two ever alike. All process and no arrival: the happier we are, the less there is for memory to take hold of, or—memory being so largely a predilection for the exceptional—come to a halt in front of. But finding, one evening on a street not quite familiar, inside a gated November-sodden garden, a building of uncertain provenance, peering into whose vestibule we were arrested—a frame within a frame, a lozenge of impeccable clarity— by the reflection, no, not of our two selves, but of dancers exercising in a mirror, at the center of that clarity, what we saw was not stillness but movement: the perfection of memory consisting, it would seem, in the never-to-be-completed. We saw them mirroring themselves, never guessing the vestibule that defined them, frame within frame, contained two other mirrors.

The radio clicks on—it’s poor swollen America, Up already and busy selling the exhausting obligation Of happiness while intermittently debating whether or not A man who kills fifty people in five minutes With an automatic weapon he has bought for the purpose Is mentally ill. Or a terrorist. Or if terrorists Are mentally ill. Because if killing large numbers of people With sophisticated weapons is a sign of sickness— You might want to begin with fire, our early ancestors Drawn to the warmth of it—from lightning, Must have been, the great booming flashes of it From the sky, the tree shriveled and sizzling, Must have been, an awful power, the odor Of ozone a god’s breath; or grass fires, The wind whipping them, the animals stampeding, Furious, driving hard on their haunches from the terror Of it, so that to fashion some campfire of burning wood, Old logs, must have felt like feeding on the crumbs Of the god’s power and they would tell the story Of Prometheus the thief, and the eagle that feasted On his liver, told it around a campfire, must have been, And then—centuries, millennia—some tribe Of meticulous gatherers, some medicine woman, Or craftsman of metal discovered some sands that, Tossed into the fire, burned blue or flared green, So simple the children could do it, must have been, Or some soft stone rubbed to a powder that tossed Into the fire gave off a white phosphorescent glow. The word for chemistry from a Greek—some say Arabic— Stem associated with metal work. But it was in China Two thousand years ago that fireworks were invented— Fire and mineral in a confined space to produce power— They knew already about the power of fire and water And the power of steam: 100 BC, Julius Caesar’s day. In Alexandria, a Greek mathematician produced A steam-powered turbine engine. Contain, explode. “The earliest depiction of a gunpowder weapon Is the illustration of a fire-lance on a mid-12th-century Silk banner from Dunhuang.” Silk and the silk road. First Arab guns in the early fourteenth century. The English Used cannons and a siege gun at Calais in 1346. Cerigna, 1503: the first battle won by the power of rifles When Spanish “arquebusiers” cut down Swiss pikemen And French cavalry in a battle in southern Italy. (Explosions of blood and smoke, lead balls tearing open The flesh of horses and young men, peasants mostly, Farm boys recruited to the armies of their feudal overlords.) How did guns come to North America? 2014, A headline: DIVERS DISCOVER THE SANTA MARIA One of the ship’s Lombard cannons may have been stolen By salvage pirates off the Haitian reef where it had sunk. And Cortes took Mexico with 600 men, 17 horses, 12 cannons. And LaSalle, 1679, constructed a seven-cannon barque, Le Griffon, and fired his cannons upon first entering the continent’s Interior. The sky darkened by the terror of the birds. In the dream time, they are still rising, swarming, Darkening the sky, the chorus of their cries sharpening As the echo of that first astounding explosion shimmers On the waters, the crew blinking at the wind of their wings. Springfield Arsenal, 1777. Rock Island Arsenal, 1862. The original Henry rifle: a sixteen shot .44 caliber rimfire Lever-action, breech-loading rifle patented—it was an age Of tinkerers—by one Benjamin Tyler Henry in 1860, Just in time for the Civil War. Confederate casualties In battle: about 95,000. Union casualties in battle: About 110,000. Contain, explode. They were throwing Sand into the fire, a blue flare, an incandescent green. The Maxim machine gun, 1914, 400-600 small caliber rounds Per minute. The deaths in combat, all sides, 1914-1918 Was 8,042,189. Someone was counting. Must have been. They could send things whistling into the air by boiling water. The children around the fire must have shrieked with delight 1920: Iraq, the peoples of that place were “restive,” Under British rule and the young Winston Churchill Invented the new policy of “aerial policing,” which amounted, Sources say, to bombing civilians and then pacifying them With ground troops. Which led to the tactic of terrorizing civilian Populations in World War II. Total casualties in that war, Worldwide: soldiers, 21 million; civilians, 27 million. They were throwing sand into the fire. The ancestor who stole Lightning from the sky had his guts eaten by an eagle. Spread-eagled on a rock, the great bird feasting. They are wondering if he is a terrorist or mentally ill. London, Dresden. Berlin. Hiroshima, Nagasaki. The casualties difficult to estimate. Hiroshima: 66,000 dead, 70,000 injured. In a minute. Nagasaki: 39,000 dead, 25,000 injured. There were more people killed, 100,000, in more terrifying fashion in the firebombing Of Tokyo. Two arms races after the ashes settled. The other industrial countries couldn’t get there Fast enough. Contain, burn. One scramble was For the rocket that delivers the explosion that burns humans By the tens of thousands and poisons the earth in the process. They were wondering if the terrorist was crazy. If he was A terrorist, maybe he was just unhappy. The other Challenge afterwards was how to construct machine guns A man or a boy could carry: lightweight, compact, easy to assemble. First a Russian sergeant, a Kalashnikov, clever with guns Built one on a German model. Now the heavy machine gun. The weapon of European imperialism through which A few men trained in gunnery could slaughter native armies In Africa and India and the mountains of Afghanistan, Became “a portable weapon a child can operate.” The equalizer. So the undergunned Vietnamese insurgents Fought off the greatest army in the world. So the Afghans Fought off the Soviet army using Kalashnikovs the CIA Provided to them. They were throwing powders in the fire And dancing. Children’s armies in Africa toting AK-47s That fire thirty rounds a minute. A round is a bullet. An estimated 500 million firearms on the earth. 100 million of them are Kalashnikov-style semi-automatics. They were dancing in Orlando, in a club. Spring night. Gay Pride. The relation of the total casualties to the history Of the weapon that sent exploded metal into their bodies— 30 rounds a minute, or 40, is a beautifully made instrument, And in America you can buy it anywhere—and into the history Of the shaming culture that produced the idea of Gay Pride— They were mostly young men, they were dancing in a club, A spring night. The radio clicks on. Green fire. Blue fire. The immense flocks of terrified birds still rising In wave after wave above the waters in the dream time. Crying out sharply. As the French ship breasted the vast interior Of the new land. America. A radio clicks on. The Arabs, A commentator is saying, require a heavy hand. Dancing.

Obscurest night involv'd the sky, Th' Atlantic billows roar'd, When such a destin'd wretch as I, Wash'd headlong from on board, Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, His floating home for ever left. No braver chief could Albion boast Than he with whom he went, Nor ever ship left Albion's coast, With warmer wishes sent. He lov'd them both, but both in vain, Nor him beheld, nor her again. Not long beneath the whelming brine, Expert to swim, he lay; Nor soon he felt his strength decline, Or courage die away; But wag'd with death a lasting strife, Supported by despair of life. He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd To check the vessel's course, But so the furious blast prevail'd, That, pitiless perforce, They left their outcast mate behind, And scudded still before the wind. Some succour yet they could afford; And, such as storms allow, The cask, the coop, the floated cord, Delay'd not to bestow. But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore, Whate'er they gave, should visit more. Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he Their haste himself condemn, Aware that flight, in such a sea, Alone could rescue them; Yet bitter felt it still to die Deserted, and his friends so nigh. He long survives, who lives an hour In ocean, self-upheld; And so long he, with unspent pow'r, His destiny repell'd; And ever, as the minutes flew, Entreated help, or cried—Adieu! At length, his transient respite past, His comrades, who before Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast, Could catch the sound no more. For then, by toil subdued, he drank The stifling wave, and then he sank. No poet wept him: but the page Of narrative sincere; That tells his name, his worth, his age, Is wet with Anson's tear. And tears by bards or heroes shed Alike immortalize the dead. I therefore purpose not, or dream, Descanting on his fate, To give the melancholy theme A more enduring date: But misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another's case. No voice divine the storm allay'd, No light propitious shone; When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, We perish'd, each alone: But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

“History always dresses us for the wrong occasions.” —Ricardo Pau-Llosa Camera Obscura The afternoon lightening his shadow, Fidel descends from the mountains, the clean-shaven lawyer turned guerilla, his eyes focused on infinity, El Jefe Máximo con sus Barbudos, rebels with rosary beads on their 600-mile procession across the island with campesinos on horseback, flatbed trucks, tanks, a new year’s journey down the oldest roads towards betrayal. Ambient light. Available light Light inside of them, nameless isleños line El Malecón to touch Fidel, already defining himself in black and white. The dramatic sky moving in for the close-up that will frame his all-night oratory, he turns to the crowd, variations on an enigma, waving from his pulpit with rehearsed eloquence, a dove on his shoulder. This is a photograph. This is not a sign. Flash-on camera. Celebrity portraits. 1.     Fidel on a balcony across the street from Grand Central Station, an American flag above his head, New York, 1959. 2.     Fidel made small by the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C., 1959. 3.     Fidel learning to ski, a minor black ball against a white landscape, Russia, 1962. 4.     Fidel and shotgun, hunting with Nikita, Russia, 1962. Circles of Confusion Beyond photographs, Havana is looted and burned. Women weep at out wailing wall, El Paredón, where traitors are taken, and television cameras shoot the executions, this blood soup, the paradoxes of our lives, three years before I am born. Photoflood But it is late afternoon, and a shower of confetti and serpentine falls from every floor of the Havana Hilton, where history is a giant piñata, where at midnight, Fidel will be photographed eating a ham sandwich.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations I He would drink by himself And raise a weathered thumb Towards the high shelf, Calling another rum And blackcurrant, without Having to raise his voice, Or order a quick stout By a lifting of the eyes And a discreet dumb-show Of pulling off the top; At closing time would go In waders and peaked cap Into the showery dark, A dole-kept breadwinner dole-kept breadwinner A person who brings in money through "dole": financial help or welfare from the state. But a natural for work. I loved his whole manner, Sure-footed but too sly, His deadpan sidling sidling Not calling attention to one’s self, unobtrusive tact, His fisherman’s quick eye And turned observant back. Incomprehensible To him, my other life. Sometimes, on the high stool, Too busy with his knife At a tobacco plug tobacco plug “Tobacco pressed into a flat oblong cake or stick” (OED), which needs to be cut up and separated before smoking And not meeting my eye, In the pause after a slug He mentioned poetry. We would be on our own And, always politic And shy of condescension, I would manage by some trick To switch the talk to eels Or lore of the horse and cart Or the Provisionals Provisionals In 1969 the IRA (Irish Republican Army) split into two groups: the “provisionals” and the “officials”: “At the Army Convention of 1969 the militarists broke away over the issue of abstention and formed the provisional IRA, which became the dominant grouping, while the remainder became known as the officials” . But my tentative art His turned back watches too: He was blown to bits Out drinking in a curfew Others obeyed, three nights After they shot dead The thirteen men in Derry. PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said, / BOGSIDE NIL “Paras” is short for “Parachute Regiment.” According to A New Dictionary of Irish History from 1800, “On 30 January 1972 thirteen people were shot dead and seventeen injured within thirty minutes by British soldiers of the Parachute Regiment in the Bogside area of Derry” , BOGSIDE NIL PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said, / BOGSIDE NIL “Paras” is short for “Parachute Regiment.” According to A New Dictionary of Irish History from 1800, “On 30 January 1972 thirteen people were shot dead and seventeen injured within thirty minutes by British soldiers of the Parachute Regiment in the Bogside area of Derry” . That Wednesday Everyone held His breath and trembled. II It was a day of cold Raw silence, wind-blown surplice and soutane surplice and soutane A priest’s garments, the loose vestment (surplice) over the close-fitting one (soutane); by association, a priest : Rained-on, flower-laden Coffin after coffin Seemed to float from the door Of the packed cathedral Like blossoms on slow water. The common funeral Unrolled its swaddling band, Lapping, tightening Till we were braced and bound Like brothers in a ring. But he would not be held At home by his own crowd Whatever threats were phoned, Whatever black flags waved. I see him as he turned In that bombed offending place, Remorse fused with terror In his still knowable face, His cornered outfaced stare Blinding in the flash. He had gone miles away For he drank like a fish Nightly, naturally Swimming towards the lure Of warm lit-up places, The blurred mesh and murmur Drifting among glasses In the gregarious smoke. How culpable was he That last night when he broke Our tribe’s complicity? ‘Now, you’re supposed to be An educated man,’ I hear him say. ‘Puzzle me The right answer to that one.’ III I missed his funeral, Those quiet walkers And sideways talkers Shoaling Shoaling Crowding and moving together as a group, like schools of fish out of his lane To the respectable Purring of the hearse... They move in equal pace With the habitual Slow consolation Of a dawdling engine, The line lifted, hand Over fist, cold sunshine On the water, the land Banked under fog: that morning I was taken in his boat, The Screw purling Screw purling “Screw” is short for “screw propeller;” “purling” describes the motion of the propeller and swirling water , turning Indolent fathoms white, I tasted freedom with him. To get out early, haul Steadily off the bottom, Dispraise Dispraise Opposite of praise, disparage, make little of the catch, and smile As you find a rhythm Working you, slow mile by mile, Into your proper haunt Somewhere, well out, beyond... Dawn-sniffing revenant revenant In Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney, Heaney described a fishing trip with Louis O’Neill and another person using this word: “The shine of morning light on the lough had an otherworldly quality, it reminded me of the dawn scene in Hamlet, when the ghost fades on the crowing of the cock – so in ‘Casualty’ Louis then turns into a ‘dawn-sniffing revenant’” , Plodder Plodder “One who works slowly and laboriously; a persevering toiler, a drudge” (Century Dictionary) through midnight rain, Question me again.

I prefer warm fur, a perfect fire to lie beside, a cozy lap where I can nap, an empty chair when she's not there. I want heat on my feet on my nose on my hide. No cat I remember dislikes December inside.

A figment, a thumbed maquette of a cat, some ditched plaything, something brought in from outside: his white fur stiff and grey, coming apart at the seams. I study the muzzle of perished rubber, one ear eaten away, his sour body lumped like a bean-bag leaking thinly into a grim towel. I sit and watch the light degrade in his eyes. He tries and fails to climb to his chair, shirks in one corner of the kitchen, cowed, denatured, ceasing to be anything like a cat, and there's a new look in those eyes that refuse to meet mine and it's the shame of  being found out.  Just that. And with that loss of face his face, I see, has turned human.

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts. Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, says the cat, although I am more equal than you. Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs? Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings walking round and round your bed and into your face. Come I will teach you to dance as naturally as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long. I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers. Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.