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As we sat at the feet of the string quartet, in their living room, on a winter night, through the hardwood floor spurts and gulps and tips and shudders came up, and the candle-scent air was thick-alive with pearwood, ebony, spruce, poplar, and horse howled, and cat skreeled, and then, when the Grösse Fugue was around us, under us, over us, in us, I felt I was hearing the genes of my birth-family, pulled, keening and grieving and scathing, along each other, scraping and craving, I felt myself held in that woods of hating longing, and I knew and knew myself, and my parents, and their parents, there—and then, at a distance, I sensed, as if it were thirty years ago, a being, far off yet, oblique-approaching, straying toward, and then not toward, and then toward this place, like a wandering dreaming herdsman, my husband. And I almost wanted to warn him away, to call out to him to go back whence he came, into some calmer life, but his beauty was too moving to me, and I wanted too much to not be alone, in the covert, any more, and so I prayed him come to me, I bid him hasten, and good welcome.

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, Sails the unshadowed main,— The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed,— Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year’s dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap, forlorn! From thy dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:— Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

In the glad revels, in the happy fêtes, When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled With the sweet wine of France that concentrates The sunshine and the beauty of the world, Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, Hallows the soil where that same wine had birth. Here, by devoted comrades laid away, Along our lines they slumber where they fell, Beside the crater at the Ferme d’Alger And up the bloody slopes of La Pompelle, And round the city whose cathedral towers The enemies of Beauty dared profane, And in the mat of multicolored flowers That clothe the sunny chalk-fields of Champagne. Under the little crosses where they rise The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed The cannon thunders, and at night he lies At peace beneath the eternal fusillade ... That other generations might possess— From shame and menace free in years to come— A richer heritage of happiness, He marched to that heroic martyrdom. Esteeming less the forfeit that he paid Than undishonored that his flag might float Over the towers of liberty, he made His breast the bulwark and his blood the moat. Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, Bare of the sculptor’s art, the poet’s lines, Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, And Autumn yellow with maturing vines. There the grape-pickers at their harvesting Shall lightly tread and load their wicker trays, Blessing his memory as they toil and sing In the slant sunshine of October days ... I love to think that if my blood should be So privileged to sink where his has sunk, I shall not pass from Earth entirely, But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk, And faces that the joys of living fill Glow radiant with laughter and good cheer, In beaming cups some spark of me shall still Brim toward the lips that once I held so dear. So shall one coveting no higher plane Than nature clothes in color and flesh and tone, Even from the grave put upward to attain The dreams youth cherished and missed and might have known; And that strong need that strove unsatisfied Toward earthly beauty in all forms it wore, Not death itself shall utterly divide From the belovèd shapes it thirsted for. Alas, how many an adept for whose arms Life held delicious offerings perished here, How many in the prime of all that charms, Crowned with all gifts that conquer and endear! Honor them not so much with tears and flowers, But you with whom the sweet fulfilment lies, Where in the anguish of atrocious hours Turned their last thoughts and closed their dying eyes, Rather when music on bright gatherings lays Its tender spell, and joy is uppermost, Be mindful of the men they were, and raise Your glasses to them in one silent toast. Drink to them—amorous of dear Earth as well, They asked no tribute lovelier than this— And in the wine that ripened where they fell, Oh, frame your lips as though it were a kiss.

Soldiers never do die well; Crosses mark the places— Wooden crosses where they fell, Stuck above their faces. Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch— All the world roars red and black; Soldiers smother in a ditch, Choking through the whole attack.

We feel the volt inside our veins, inside the vines, inside the rain, and through the capillaries of a tree. We feel the pulse above in storms, vibrato of thunder, the whispering rhythms of a river, magnetic currents in the earth, the alternating flow of breath, the push of tides, reversing air from caves, dilating hum and dance of bees, the chant of auctioneer. All oscillate together, or they seem to, in this play of chance, beneath the stars' indifference.

I know him, that man walking- toward me up the crowded street of the city, I have lived with him seven years now, I know his fast stride, his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust deep in his jacket pockets, hands that have known my body, touched its softest part, caused its quick shudders and slow releasings, I have seen his face above my face, his mouth smiling, moaning his eyes closed and opened, I have studied his eyes, the brown turning gold at the centers, I have silently watched him lying beside me in the early morning, I know his loneliness, like mine, human and sad, but different, too, his private pain and pleasure I can never enter even as he comes closer, past trees and cars, trash and flowers, steam rising from the manhole covers, gutters running with rain, he lifts his head, he sees me, we are strangers again, and a rending music of desire and loss— I don’t know him—courses through me, and we kiss and say,It’s good to see you, as if we haven’t seen each other in years when it was just a few hours ago, and we are shy, then, not knowing what to say next.

Change is the new, improved word for god, lovely enough to raise a song or implicate a sea of wrongs, mighty enough, like other gods, to shelter, bring together, and estrange us. Please, god, we seem to say, change us.

On the eighth day he coined the word “alone” and saw that it was as good as everything else. A yellow school bus rattled down the lane, a wind blew in a drainpipe, strong, mellifluous. I brought two empty crates to the parking lot, watched neighbors with briefcases and car keys. At noon a mailman passed by where I sat invisible, like a tree among trees. Why, why, I asked. I wanted to know why, but only scared a squirrel that dropped his acorn when my voice broke silence unexpectedly— a white noise in a wireless telephone. My club soda went flat in the bottle. With a spit of rain, a wind blew again from the lake. I raised my index finger and touched it, pleading, give me a break, give me a break.

Thirteen years ago,    before bulk barns    and fifth gear diesel tractors,    we rode royal blue tractors with toolboxes big enough    to hold a six pack on ice. In the one hundred fifteen degree    summer heat    with air    so thick with moisture you drink as you breathe. Before the year dusters sprayed malathion over our clustered bodies,    perspiring while we primed bottom lugs, those ground level leaves of tobacco, and it clung to us with black tar so sticky we rolled eight-inch balls off our arms at night    and Cloroxed our clothes for hours and hours. Before we were poisoned    and the hospital thought we had been burned in fires, at least to the third degree, when the raw, oozing hives that covered ninety-eight percent of our bodies from the sprays ordered by the FDA and spread by     landowners, before anyone had seen automated machines that top and prime. While we topped the lavender blooms of many tiny flowers gathered into one,    gorgeous. By grasping hold below the petals with our bare, calloused hands and twisting downward, quick, hard, only one time,    snapped them off. Before edgers and herbicides took what they call weeds, when we walked for days through thirty acres    and chopped them out with hoes. Hoes,    made long before    from wood and steel and sometimes (even longer ago) from wood and deer scapula. Before the bulk primers came and we primed all the leaves by hand, stooped over at the waist for the lower ones    and    through the season gradually    rising higher     until    we stood and worked simultaneously, as married to the fields as we were to each other, carrying up to fifty pounds of fresh leaves under each arm    and    sewing them onto sticks four feet long on a looper under the shade of a tin-roofed barn,    made of shingle, and poking it up through the rafters inside to be caught by a hanger    who poked it up higher in the rafters    to another who held a higher position and    so    they filled the barn. And the leaves hung down like butterfly wings,    though sometimes the color of luna moths,    or Carolina parakeets,    when just an hour ago    they had been laid upon    the old wooden cart trailers pulled behind the orange Allis-Chalmers tractor with huge, round fenders and only a screwdriver and salt in the toolbox, picked by primers    so hot we would race through the rows to reach the twenty-five gallon jugs of water placed throughout the field to encourage    and    in attempt to satisfy our insatiable thirsts from drinking air    which poured through our pores without breaking through to our need    for more water    in the sun. Sun we imagined to disappear yet respected    for growing all things on earth when quenched with rains called forth by our song     and drumming. Leaves, which weeks later,    would be taken down and the strings pulled like string on top of a large dog-food bag and sheeted up into burlap sheets that bundled over a hundred pounds when we smashed down with our feet, but gently smashing, then thrown up high    to a catcher    on a big clapboard trailer pulled behind two-ton trucks and taken to market in Fuquay-Varina and sold to Philip Morris    and Winston-Salem    for around    a buck a pound. Leaves cured to a bright leaf, a golden yellow with the strongest aroma of tobacco barn curing and hand grown quality before the encroachment of big business in the Reagan era and the slow murder of method from a hundred years before. When the loons cried out in laughter by the springs and the bass popped the surface on the pond, early on, next to the fields, before that time when it was unfashionable to transplant each individual baby plant, the infant tobacco we nurtured, to transplant those seedlings to each hill in the field, the space for that particular plant and we watched    as    they would grow. Before all of this new age, new way, I was a sharecropper in Willow Springs, North Carolina, as were you    and we were proud to be Tsa la gi wishing for winter    so we could make camp at Qualla Boundary    and Oconaluftee would be free of tourists and filled with snow and those of us who held out forever and had no CIBs would be home again with our people, while the BIA forgot to watch. When we still remembered before even the Europeans, working now shoulder to shoulder with descendants of their slaves they brought from Africa when they sold our ancestors as slaves in the Middle East, that then the tobacco was sacred to all of us and we prayed whenever we smoked and did not smoke for pleasure    and I    was content and free. Then they came and changed things and you left me for a fancy white girl and I waited on the land until you brought her back in that brand new white Trans Am, purchased from our crop,    you gave her and left her waiting in a motel. The nearest one was forty miles away, but    near enough    for you and    for her    and I knew    though I never spoke a word to you about it,    I knew and I kept it to myself    to this day    and time    and I never let on until I left    on our anniversary. I drove the pick-up down the dirt path    by the empty fields and rented a shack for eighty dollars, the one with cardboard windows and a Gillespie house floor design, with torn and faded floral paper on walls and linoleum so thin over rotted board that the floor gave if you weighed over a hundred pounds.    I did not. And with no running water of any kind,    or bathroom. The one at hilltop,    where I could see out across all the fields and hunt for meat when I wanted and find peace. I heard you remarried and went into automated farming and kept up with America. I watched all of you    from the hill and I waited for the lavender blooms to return    and when it was spring even the blooms    had turned white. I rolled up my bedroll,    remembering before, when the fields were like waves on a green ocean, and turned away,    away from the change and corruption    of big business on small farms of traditional agricultural people,    and sharecroppers. Away,    so that I could always    hold this concise image of before    that    time    and it floods    my memory.

Standing in front of a mirror, my mother tells me she is ugly says the medication is making her fat. I laugh & walk her back to the bed. My mother tells me she is ugly in the same voice she used to say no woman could love you& I watch her pull at her body & it is mine. My heavy breast. My disappointing shape. She asks for a bowl of plain broth & it becomes the cup of vinegar she would pour down my throat. Everyday after school, I would kneel before her. I would remove my clothes & ask her to mark the progress. It’s important that I mention, I truly wanted to be beautiful for her. In my dreams I am thin & if not thin, something better. I tell my mother she is still beautiful & she laughs. The room fills with flies. They gather in the shape of a small boy. They lead her back to the mirror, but my reflection is still there.