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1 Meryon saw it coming (who was he?): No people, so no noise. As it should be. The Bridge. The Morgue. Ghostly round his bed Antipodean atolls and tattoos had fluted, Volcanoes puffed. Then borborygmic sea Forked, at its last gasp, into a V: Down that black gallery and backward slid A syrup, foul, ovum and sperm concocted, The foggy groan of Antichrist. 1863: People mattered nothing, live or dead. Paris by his impeccable etchings emptied: Pointy turrets, windows, not a single head Poking out—and there across the sky, Tortuous, the skeleton birds creak by. 2 As if all the steps had stopped As if all the takes had token As if all the creaks had croaken As if all that weeps had wopped As if all that flips had flopped As if all that mocks had moaken As if all that speaks had spoken As if all that drips had dropped As if all that hopes had hopped As if all that leaps had lopped As if all that aches had oaken As if all that peaks had poken As if all that creeps had cropped As if all that peeps had popped 3 The old aquaforte art is back, thought Baudelaire. Multiple majesty of stone piled on stone; Obelisks of industry discharge into the air Their coalescent smoke. Almost airborne Scaffoldings roped to monuments under repair— Very poetic, beauty so paradoxical I never saw the like; and the sky over it all— Eagles. Tumult. Perspective deepens there With all the dramas that have come and gone. The artist: Once a sailor, now he’ll seek In nooks of masonry a sphinx. I think you’d get a scare To hear him talk

On seeing some pictures of the interior of his house, Washington, D.C. Only the casket left, the jewel gone Whose noble presence filled these stately rooms, And made this spot a shrine where pilgrims came— Stranger and friend—to bend in reverence Before the great, pure soul that knew no guile; To listen to the wise and gracious words That fell from lips whose rare, exquisite smile Gave tender beauty to the grand, grave face. Upon these pictured walls we see thy peers,— Poet, and saint, and sage, painter, and king,— A glorious band;—they shine upon us still; Still gleam in marble the enchanting forms Whereupon thy artist eye delighted dwelt; Thy favorite Psyche droops her matchless face, Listening, methinks, for the beloved voice Which nevermore on earth shall sound her praise. All these remain,—the beautiful, the brave, The gifted, silent ones; but thou art gone! Fair is the world that smiles upon us now; Blue are the skies of June, balmy the air That soothes with touches soft the weary brow; And perfect days glide into perfect nights,— Moonlit and calm; but still our grateful hearts Are sad, and faint with fear,— for thou art gone! Oh friend beloved, with longing, tear-filled eyes We look up, up to the unclouded blue, And seek in vain some answering sign from thee. Look down upon us, guide and cheer us still From the serene height where thou dwellest now; Dark is the way without the beacon light Which long and steadfastly thy hand upheld. Oh, nerve with courage new the stricken hearts Whose dearest hopes seem lost in losing thee.

Calm as that second summer which precedes The first fall of the snow, In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds, The City bides the foe. As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud, Her bolted thunders sleep— Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, Looms o’er the solemn deep. No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar To guard the holy strand; But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war Above the level sand. And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, Unseen, beside the flood— Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched That wait and watch for blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, Walk grave and thoughtful men, Whose hands may one day wield the patriot’s blade As lightly as the pen. And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim Over a bleeding hound, Seem each one to have caught the strength of him Whose sword she sadly bound. Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, Day patient following day, Old Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and dome, Across her tranquil bay. Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands And spicy Indian ports, Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, And summer to her courts. But still, along you dim Atlantic line, The only hostile smoke Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine, From some frail, floating oak. Shall the spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles, And with an unscathed brow, Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, As fair and free as now? We know not; in the temple of the Fates God has inscribed her doom; And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb.

Minnesota, May 1945 DMZ, September 1967 1 In Tokyo our gallant boys dance rock-and-roll, squint eyes wary at standing easy. They leer and reel on a springboard tip and then jackknife toward the electronic noise . . . And Charley, when Time Inc. said he said the President had his head wedged about Vietnam burning for honor or—who knows? the Action he had said— married the Marines. He showered for vows on those who took his word who taught him shoot it out and shout “Yes Sir Yes Sir!” and sent him out like napalm obedient to any itchy finger. I hope the fields of Minnesota gave perspective when he moved out as to the starting line on the command,survive,survive. . . . our juiced doughboys feel their girls. 2 What did I tell you when we met last and it “after the leeches and the food” on a break in the rain was already up with you, Charley? Mouthing the big cigar like a gangster at the wheel . . . cigarette between thumb and finger the way we all even in junior high learned not to your men watching in wonder him tasting the strange (turned officer so young) foreign taste that smoke:     and all was dark except what sparks he scattered there, stubbing it out What could we do for you you hugging your knees who taught you to raise your voice? 3 No more the wide Mankato pearled with ice under blue January sky your arm around the shoulder of the friend who ran faster no more the long hours pad in hand composing reasons for your belief a belief in fathers has no reason no more the simple passion of going first your hatless straightness, the struggle, the deep worry, the dark Africa of being alive in a country run by chiefs without tribes no more of all that, only your brief beauty in many hearts in a time when fathers bury their sons, and you surrounded, cut down in a war you were fated never to see, blinded by love for all men.

The stage is set for imminent disaster. Here is the little tramp, standing On a stack of books in order To reach the microphone, the Poet he’s impersonating somehow Trussed and mumbling in a Tweed bundle at his feet. He opens his mouth:Tra-la! Out comes doves, incandescent bulbs, Plastic roses.Well, that’s that, Squirms the young professor who’s Coordinated this, No more visiting poets! His department head groans For the trap door. As it Swings away The tramp keeps on as if Nothing has occurred, A free arm mimicking A wing.

Between the bridge and the river he falls through a huge portion of night; it is not as if falling is something new. Over and over he slipped into the gulf between what he knew and how he was known. What others wanted opened like an abyss: the laughing stock-clerks at the grocery, women at the luncheonette amused by his gestures. What could he do, live with one hand tied behind his back? So he began to fall into the star-faced section of night between the trestle and the water because he could not meet a little town’s demands, and his earrings shone and his wrists were as limp as they were. I imagine he took the insults in and made of them a place to live; we learn to use the names because they are there, familiar furniture:faggot was the bed he slept in, hard and white, but simple somehow, queer something sharp but finally useful, a tool, all the jokes a chair, stiff-backed to keep the spine straight, a table, a lamp. And because he’s fallen for twenty-three years, despite whatever awkwardness his flailing arms and legs assume he is beautiful and like any good diver has only an edge of fear he transforms into grace. Or else he is not afraid, and in this way climbs back up the ladder of his fall, out of the river into the arms of the three teenage boys who hurled him from the edge— really boys now, afraid, their fathers’ cars shivering behind them, headlights on—and tells them it’s all right, that he knows they didn’t believe him when he said he couldn’t swim, and blesses his killers in the way that only the dead can afford to forgive.

I am afraid of your transcendental death. When people say think of a man. I think of a brown man. Sometimes the earth grows khella because she can feel our suffering. Yooooooing beneath Costco tikis. When people say think of a man. I think of a white man. I am meant to hold you in your oblique pain, your map-driven pain. Yooooooing beneath Costco tikis. I was drunk holding my teeth in like students. I am meant to hold you in your oblique pain, your map-driven pain. You die like an actor. I was drunk holding my teeth in like students. My body was a brown dog I shoved back into the water. You die like an actor. I beseeched but couldn’t stay out of the first person. My body was a brown dog I shoved back into the water. Hold me, hold me, hold me, holdmeholdmeholdme. I beseeched but couldn’t stay out of the first person. Where does it hurt, we say. Hold me, hold me, hold me, holdmeholdmeholdme. I am afraid of your transcendental death.

I beat you with a hazel rod Come to me in madness I beat you with a bloodied rod Come like an angel I beat you with a rod from heaven Come to me like a wild boar *       *       * Ninety-nine serpents— ninety-nine flaming beasts— go to Ion Slip in by his shirt-collar squat in his heart scald him burn him turn his eyes to my eyes his face to my face his path to my house Make him see me in the distance a fine-feathered peacock make him pick me out as basil among weeds make him tease me among the girls Like following gold and silver fall in step with my words with my walk with my dance *       *       * Sweet boy don't send so much longing— send a little less and come with it yourself *       *       * Tuesday, basket full of black, how did you make me fall in love— did you clip my hair did you steal my footsteps? How did you charm me— with the hair of a mad wolf with three straws from the bed with splintered wood with the fairness of eyebrows with a chip off the gate with dark hair from a braid? How drive every other love away? *       *       * Eagle, eagle, grow into a flying bird Take yourself to Ion's house What you find in his head take in your head what you find in his ears take in your ears what you find in his mouth take in your mouth what you find in his hands take in your wings Take that great wrong away in your feathers— and what you find in your head put it in her head And what you find in your feathers put it on the table in their house

With only his dim lantern To tell him where he is And every time a mountain Of fresh corpses to load up Take them to the other side Where there are plenty more I’d say by now he must be confused As to which side is which I’d say it doesn’t matter No one complains he’s got Their pockets to go through In one a crust of bread in another a sausage Once in a long while a mirror Or a book which he throws Overboard into the dark river Swift and cold and deep

Says fifty-four-year-old obese Hispanic female — I wonder if they mean the one with long black braids, Peruvian, who sells tamales at the farmers’ market, tells me I’m too thin, I better eat; or is she the Dominican with too much rouge and almond eyes at the dry cleaner’s who must have been so beautiful in her youth; or maybe she’s the Cuban lady drunk on grief who I’ve seen half-asleep, alone as if that bench were only hers, the park her home at last; or else the Mexican who hoards the littered papers she collects and says they are her “documents”; if not, it could be that Colombian drug addict whose Spanish, even when she’s high, is perfect; or maybe it’s the one who never says exactly where she’s from, but who reminds me of my grandmother, poor but refined, lace handkerchief balled up in her plump hand, who died too young from a condition that some doctor, nose in her chart, overlooked.