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The dog Stoltz pushed his paw pads into my neck, the warm, beaten leather deep under my chin, and let slip the one paw to up near my mouth with all the filth of the many blocks we trod, together trod, a well-moistened, adenoidal sound, part sigh and part growl, coming out of him, transported, he seemed, in a slow-motion delirium as I tickled his chest and behind his ear when he just then told me he’d tear out my throat, looked in my eye and smiled, best as a dog can, then turned ruminative and spoke once more: —I simply have to knock off that essay on Sassoon. This would have been Sassoon the war poet, understand. Dogs cannot write. My mother told me this. As for his talk, well, I took no special notice. His love of the war poets was well known. Stoltz would have been part bull and something else. Two friends walked by just then, handily as these things go, and inquired of us sitting down there on the stoop, not even, a doorway merely, along a busy street, how went the day and what pursuits was I attending; but what interested the two of them most were the tergiversations of the dog Stoltz, first beast, then scholar, then abject and adored. (Say, who among us does not care to be undressed?) He was not really my dog, you see, and of this made note, but were glad as well at my having a new dog in my life. It was a busy stretch of pavement, Amsterdam maybe, or Broadway, or farther down just south of Chelsea. I can tell you it was the West Side, of that I’m certain, and it was mild, spring-like, a few drops in the air. The friends passed along and the dog Stoltz slept. He was not my dog, you know. He simply followed me out of what can only have been a very fine home, such were his graces, his recondite tastes. But he was a killer too, and rather smelled. I cannot accommodate another animal now, please understand. I am between places. I will yearn for Stoltz, but no.

Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers. Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child, Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog, The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils, Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister, The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night, As if she understood the wind and rain, The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert. —O I am sad when I see dogs or children! For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean. Tell us, Freud, can it be that lovely children Have merely ugly dreams of natural functions? And you, too, Wordsworth, are children truly Clouded with glory, learned in dark Nature? The dog in humble inquiry along the ground, The child who credits dreams and fears the dark, Know more and less than you: they know full well Nor dream nor childhood answer questions well: You too are strangers, children are Shakespearean. Regard the child, regard the animal, Welcome strangers, but study daily things, Knowing that heaven and hell surround us, But this, this which we say before we’re sorry, This which we live behind our unseen faces, Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished, For we are incomplete and know no future, And we are howling or dancing out our souls In beating syllables before the curtain: We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.

Were I to fall in love all over again, it would be with this low ceiling, with the calm  faces of  the two men going about their craft, and with her, now twisting towards them, beautiful, defiant and free. Because we forget how beauty was once itself and nothing else, how it held its stellar moment in attic and cellar. Because that is what beauty is, this compact with time and the silence of  concentration on one subversive operation, that requires courage and sacrifice and never comes without a price.

Ay me, to whom shall I my case complain, That may compassion my impatient grief? Or where shall I unfold my inward pain, That my enriven heart may find relief? Shall I unto the heavenly pow’rs it show, Or unto earthly men that dwell below? To heavens? Ah, they, alas, the authors were, And workers of my unremedied woe: For they foresee what to us happens here, And they foresaw, yet suffered this be so. From them comes good, from them comes also ill, That which they made, who can them warn to spill. To men? Ah, they, alas, like wretched be, And subject to the heavens’ ordinance: Bound to abide whatever they decree. Their best redress is their best sufferance. How then can they, like wretched, comfort me, The which no less need comforted to be? Then to myself will I my sorrow mourn, Sith none alive like sorrowful remains: And to myself my plaints shall back return, To pay their usury with doubled pains. The woods, the hills, the rivers shall resound The mournful accent of my sorrow’s ground. Woods, hills, and rivers now are desolate, Sith he is gone the which them all did grace: And all the fields do wail their widow state, Sith death their fairest flow’r did late deface. The fairest flow’r in field that ever grew, Was Astrophel; that was, we all may rue. What cruel hand of cursed foe unknown, Hath cropped the stalk which bore so fair a flow’r? Untimely cropped, before it well were grown, And clean defaced in untimely hour. Great loss to all that ever him did see, Great loss to all, but greatest loss to me. Break now your garlands, O ye shepherds’ lasses, Sith the fair flow’r, which them adorned, is gone: The flow’r, which them adorned, is gone to ashes, Never again let lass put garland on. Instead of garland, wear sad cypress now, And bitter elder, broken from the bough. Ne ever sing the love-lays which he made: Who ever made such lays of love as he? Ne ever read the riddles, which he said Unto yourselves, to make you merry glee. Your merry glee is now laid all abed, Your merry maker now, alas, is dead. Death, the devourer of all the world’s delight, Hath robbed you and reft from me my joy: Both you and me and all the world he quite Hath robbed of joyance, and left sad annoy. Joy of the world, and shepherds’ pride was he, Shepherds’ hope never like again to see. O Death, that hast us of such riches reft, Tell us at least, what hast thou with it done? What is become of him whose flow’r here left Is but the shadow of his likeness gone: Scarce like the shadow of that which he was, Naught like, but that he like a shade did pass. But that immortal spirit, which was decked With all the dowries of celestial grace: By sovereign choice from th’heavenly choirs select, And lineally derived from angels’ race, Oh, what is now of it become, aread. Ay me, can so divine a thing be dead? Ah no: it is not dead, ne can it die, But lives for aye, in blissful Paradise: Where like a new-born babe it soft doth lie, In bed of lilies wrapped in tender wise, And compassed all about with roses sweet, And dainty violets from head to feet. There thousand birds all of celestial brood, To him do sweetly carol day and night: And with strange notes, of him well understood, Lull him asleep in angel-like delight; Whilst in sweet dream to him presented be Immortal beauties, which no eye may see. But he them sees and takes exceeding pleasure Of their divine aspects, appearing plain, And kindling love in him above all measure, Sweet love still joyous, never feeling pain. For what so goodly form he there doth see, He may enjoy from jealous rancor free. There liveth he in everlasting bliss, Sweet spirit never fearing more to die: Ne dreading harm from any foes of his, Ne fearing savage beasts’ more cruelty. Whilst we here, wretches, wail his private lack, And with vain vows do often call him back. But live thou there still happy, happy spirit, And give us leave thee here thus to lament: Not thee that dost thy heaven’s joy inherit, But our own selves that here in dole are drent. Thus do we weep and wail, and wear our eyes, Mourning in other’s, our own miseries.

The palms are psalms. The nail salons, manicured lawns. This is some phase. The park has been razed. I miss the hip, hours at a clip, their dopey glazed Dolores haze (sorry). I worry about basic stuff: my graying scruff, Ambien addiction. Eviction ... — But there’s another story: this site was once a cemetery. In 1888, the late were stirred, disinterred, carted somewhere calm, a nothing place called Colma. By then the dead prohibited in city light. They thought this was all right: the dead have nothing to lose; the dead were Jews. Hills of Eternity, Home of Peace: the dead were put in their place.

Through the Victorians spinning a wool of music the gang in the breeze Boys and girls headed toward the park No longer in my view Wondering now what they doing How they divide Hold hands Lay on benches Breathe Dolores park green waving mounds where downtown looks like you could stretch and scratch it You can see the water smaller the other side connected with the bay bridge from this angle Appears as a cowboy rope Lasso Back to the park the across the street is windows Suggest Eyes which could have been looking at savannahs / stretches had it not been for transportation The city settling Up from planks and kerosense lamps Rugged Small vocabularies full of passion Found a gold sliver on the way to my fruits Raise the air fair Let the news out Rush like Hawaiian beer The big radio of the teenagers comes again looking through the curtain Look them wasted Clothes wrinkled Eyes fresh like just arrived mushrooms they move to the interior of the Mission where they hang out / generations on the streets

If, when studying road atlases while taking, as you call it, your morning dump, you shout down to me names like Miami City, Franconia, Cancún, as places for you to take me to from here, can I help it if all I can think is things that are stupid, like he loves me he loves me not? I don’t think so. No more than, some mornings, waking to your hands around me, and remembering these are the fingers, the hands I’ve over and over given myself to, I can stop myself from wondering does that mean they’re the same I’ll grow old with. Yesterday, in the café I keep meaning to show you, I thought this is how I’ll die maybe, alone, somewhere too far away from wherever you are then, my heart racing from espresso and too many cigarettes, my head down on the table’s cool marble, and the ceiling fan turning slowly above me, like fortune, the part of fortune that’s half-wished- for only—it did not seem the worst way. I thought this is another of those things I’m always forgetting to tell you, or don’t choose to tell you, or I tell you but only in the same way, each morning, I keep myself from saying too loud I love you until the moment you flush the toilet, then I say it, when the rumble of water running down through the house could mean anything: flood, your feet descending the stairs any moment; any moment the whole world, all I want of the world, coming down.

Let us descend into the blind world now. — Dante, “The Divine Comedy” As above, so below; as below, so above. — Three Initiates, “The Kybalion” A Lowcountry marsh trembles with the blood of an African Who refused to climb out of the salt and mud of the bay And quite literally lost his head. A hunter named Hunter Waits for the man’s wounds to close and for him to rise Again. Some call this festive cruelty Paradise. Pleasure. Demby, the African made to rise and suffer another shot, Calls it the Afterlife, the unceasing blind world of death He welcomed expecting the end to his captivity and exile. But there is no end to the perfecting of cruelty even now In the Afterlife, where a hawk humped up in the high weeds And a house on fire are a congruent sadness, a brief history Of nature’s one duty for flesh —decay, decay, decay... Sometimes, it is as if every bird in the Afterlife trills this One song. And I forget who I am, but then I look down At my feet shuffling in darkness and hear my name — Till ... Till ... Till ... And I know I am no farmer, blade Or mule driven over some roach-ragged road to field And fray, and sometimes I forget how I came here to After- Life, to pleasure, to domestic violence, to drive, be Driven, and then I look down at my hands. It is a war That brought you this peace, a war that brought you this peace. And then, I heard a question: “Shall we kill all of the masters?” And before I brokered an answer, I heard a voice say: “Then, we must kill ourselves, first. And who will Be left to kill the masters?” I turned to find nothing But a boy in a tree and a girl beside him, their heads Tolling in the wind like pecker-fretted fruit. Voice, I said, Come now or do not come at all. And there, a man I had seen before scratching in dust next to a drill field With a dictionary and a strange astronomy for a face. Ezra, is that you, I asked. “The peasants’ bent shoulders, Odysseus and the dead bullock — call me whatever you’d like. I come to every name like a white ox toward Pisa And the butcher’s road. I come to Paradise dragged By the hair ... with one day’s reading and surrendered Temple.” You do talk funny, I said. “He do the police In different voices,” he said. And when all the voices sound like the police, I said, kill all the voices. And so ran. I ran from Ezra who ran after me and demanded he be My guide. “There is no running from the forest of men. There is no running from men.” I’ll be damned, I said — But before I could finish Ezra said, “That’s right. Be damned. Be here taloned and tumbling the sky down in Paradise. Here. Be in your cage and free.” But here is not the here I seek nor sought. For that here harangues me And I might as well be the nigger coming over The obstacle fence, a periplum of certain disaster, A choir of empty cups sitting loudly before the famished, Your prince, dear Ezra, hanging by his heels in the piazza, The sprezzatura of maggots rummaging the round heart For its divinity and pulse. Ezra, nothing of you but the dead. And so, I ran past the possum running through the skull Holes of a dead man lying in the fog that licked them Into a wet testimony, the possum testifying, too, to their death — Coming, going, in ruins and floating out, out, beyond Their murders and dropped plates, out beyond the Thame-ish Rivers and its drowning traditions. And then I looked back And saw Ezra. He had come to his cage and could go no farther. “Till,” he said. “Bring me up from beneath these decks, One slaver to another.” He winked and I winked back, Handed him the katydid buzzing in my pocket, as I had done Before, dug a trench around him as another had done before, Then said, “Ezra, be here in your cage and free,” and ran. And then I came upon a mountain and then a chasm For which there was no bridge and so turned back To find a possum running behind me, and I asked him, Dear Possum, what do we do with this darkness Between us, and the possum said nothing and ran on Into the darkness, into the chasm and fell speaking of The end of touch, the desire to forget desire, shadows, The fear in a handful of dust, a woman’s mouth, Fear I had known of and visited though now I cringed At the thought of that violence, the violence that I brought — And so thought to throw myself, too, in that chasm When a hand touched my shoulder, a voice said, “Not now, Maybe never. On we go, dear boy, through this weather. Let’s find us another theory of light. Or darkness.” Then, she laughed, for it was a woman with a lit darkness And a careful chin, glasses, her body a tin of tender. What do you know of me, I asked. She said, “Louis, I know of you as I know fog — that it comes on Through the alleys and past the dead boys and girls Who had not wanted to die in those alleys and ornament The city’s sight. Louis,” she said. “I’ve known all your light. But do you know mine?” And I hadn’t, I hadn’t. “I was a taken city burning,” she said, “a burning house Built to heal the sick, a sick house full of healing, The owl, moccasin, and panther — a rising For which there has never been such risen, the total Black. I is the total black. Flame and fox and knot Of the what-nots you would have forgotten if not for me, I am perfect fucking memory, no-dominion-defied, The god-head-glitter-gussied-up-for-the-going-down.” And though I thought I saw I had not seen. Instead Of one body, three. Women. And who and who and who, I asked. They laughed at my asking and said, “You Wouldn’t know us, but we will tell you our names — Mother, Song, and Holy Yoke. Audre, Gwendolyn, And Lucille. Follow us. Or heel.” And where And where should I follow you? They did not answer, Instead, they walked on the edge of the abyss Laughing as if the abyss. “We are what is whatnot, The ever shimmying out of the never-wound. Louis, do you follow or do you fall,” They said. “Are you short or is you tall?” And on and on they played, pleasured, and pigeoned With each other, kiting sound and word between them As I have seen lovers do, passing cigarettes and smoke From one mouth to another, the smoke the shared body Of a God that has no master or mastering plan Other than abiding in darkness, abiding in both Its coronation and crucifixion. On and on we walked. And I followed. Beyond the bears chortling pears From Augustine’s outstretched hand, out beyond the river Scissoring the changing maple, its leaves ambering Then auburn then green each time a child appeared And touched its trunk. We stopped, watched. I asked Who are they. And the one full of light and knives answered, Waving at a few who journeyed to the edge of the water But did not wade in. And why don’t they wade in, I asked. She snickered, quieted, then said, “Wind and foxes, what was never mine but was and was.” As if she knew I did not understand, continued, “‘The ones I got but did not get,’ the wild hair they could not grow But scratches me now as it did once in a dream. Our abortions, Louis, our ones given and gave. Dem. The ones given all of their years at once. And none Or never.” And when she spoke, I saw another come To the shore and wave at me, a boy given and gave, the crushed- Color of late evening long after the pickers have come In and settled near a pot of ox bones boiling in the evening Of their own water, once again predicting the arch And strange astronomy of the flesh and its march march March to October and the battered soil. I mean I turned From the one waving because I could not be beneath The stairs of his steering and stare. Paradise, Why do you bring me to such weather? Why Would any man come down from his noose for this? “Because coming down is exactly the point. All heavens lesser and below heaven. Noose, not ... You came to see what has become of death ...    ” The women spoke as one who had many tongues — All Holy Ghost and gut of a river gabbling over the white Stones. And where are we going, I asked. “Where language begins, Till. Paradise. But over there.” • And wasn’t this paradise that I had entered Through the thick marsh waters out of the cane The crowds fleeced of their living flesh at the far bank The intubated children with their gas masks Hanging from their hands and wandering The sand in wet hospital gowns in this their new cancer Wasn’t this paradise A boy headphoned and heart drunk Swaying at the back of the crowd mumbling to himself Started from the bottom now we’re here Started from the bottom now my whole team is fucking here

47

Don’t bother the earth spirit who lives here. She is working on a story. It is the oldest story in the world and it is delicate, changing. If she sees you watching she will invite you in for coffee, give you warm bread, and you will be obligated to stay and listen. But this is no ordinary story. You will have to endure earthquakes, lightning, the deaths of all those you love, the most blinding beauty. It’s a story so compelling you may never want to leave; this is how she traps you. See that stone finger over there? That is the only one who ever escaped.