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In three directions are two storms. I instruct the edges of my hands to become irises, to shatter in that way, in three directions. There's nothing behind me. Viols claw beneath our fences at the elevation of sound to pure unsanctity, the moment of simultaneity: airplanes seeming to collide and not colliding, the crow alighting in the manner of a seabird, the carbomb a more than momentary poppy. The bad total of death points one direction. It moves at the edge of my hand at the memorial service, viols useless now laid across their breasts, the attitude of submission. I was eating dinner in a tall room. I was the third guest. I felt a tightening in my asshole, and the yellow wine turned to red, turned to your hand on another's woven onto tapestry. How the month of June became our sons, so many bridges for one river, was the story always delighted you. The carbomb was faster. Simultaneous with the iris the viol shatters in three directions. Everything I have taken claws helplessly at sunlight that won't defend itself. The red one is the poppy.

1914-18 ("The Honours of War" —A Diversity of Creatures) These were our children who died for our lands: they were dear in our sight. We have only the memory left of their home-treasured sayings and laughter. The price of our loss shall be paid to our hands, not another’s hereafter. Neither the Alien nor Priest shall decide on it.    That is our right. But who shall return us the children? At the hour the Barbarian chose to disclose his pretences, And raged against Man, they engaged, on the breasts that they bared for us, The first felon-stroke of the sword he had long-time prepared for us— Their bodies were all our defence while we wrought our defences. They bought us anew with their blood, forbearing to blame us, Those hours which we had not made good when the Judgment o’ercame us. They believed us and perished for it.    Our statecraft, our learning Delivered them bound to the Pit and alive to the burning Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honour— Nor since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her. Nor was their agony brief, or once only imposed on them. The wounded, the war-spent, the sick received no exemption: Being cured they returned and endured and achieved our redemption, Hopeless themselves of relief, till Death, marveling, closed on them. That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness was given To corruption unveiled and assailed by the malice of Heaven— By the heart-shaking jests of Decay where it lolled in the wires— To be blanched or gay-painted by fumes— to be cindered by fires— To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation From crater to crater.    For that we shall take expiation. But who shall return us our children?

The children are hiding among the raspberry canes. They look big to one another, the garden small. Already in their mouths this soft fruit That lasts so briefly in the supermarket Tastes like the past. The gritty wall, Behind the veil of leaves, is hollow. There are yellow wasps inside it. The children know. They know the wall is hard, although it hums. They know a lot and will not forget it soon. When did we forget? But we were never Children, never found where they were hiding And hid with them, never followed The wasp down into its nest With a fingertip that still tingles. We lie in bed at night, thinking about The future, always the future, always forgetting That it will be the past, hard and hollow, Veiled and humming, soon enough.

Children grow in secret. They hide themselves in the depths and darker reaches of the house to become wild cats, white birches. One day when you’re only half-watching the herd as it straggles back in with the afternoon dust, one child, the prettiest of them all, comes close and rises up on tiptoe to whisper I love you,I’ll be waiting for you in the hay. Shaking some, you go to find your shotgun; you spend what’s left of the day firing at rooks and jackdaws, uncountable at this hour, and crows.

Your pansies died again today. All June I’ve watched them scorch and fall by noon, their faces folding down to tissue-paper triangles. I bring them back with water, words, a pinch, but they are sick to death of resurrection. You planted them last fall, these “Chillers” guaranteed to come again in spring. They returned in April—you did not. You who said pick all you want, it just makes more! one day in 1963, and I, a daughter raised on love and miracles, believed it.

When death stands in your doorway, you must show no weakness. If he points at his watch, answer “in five minutes.” If he insists, murmur “just a minute.” When he bridles, whisper “half a minute,” 
“a second,” “half a sec,” “one moment.” You mustn’t look him in the eye. But don’t avert your gaze. Glance decisively at the bridge of the nose or the moist place right below 
the lips. If he unfolds a map, please don’t express a preference for the seashore or the mountains. Betray no longing or anxiety. You might tap the margin nonchalantly, if there is a margin. There’s an old superstition that death is a healer, he brings peace, 
escape from corruption. On the contrary: he is not a person, an animal, an insect, not even a pebble. Not even a name. Not an event. Not a whiff of night air. So why, ask yourself, does he fidget there, with that peevish “can’t we meet each other halfway” expression, in those absurd Goodwill clothes, baggy corduroy suit, pants and jacket the same color but different wales, so often folded the seams are white as chalk lines, fat two-tone white-and-beige golf shoes with cleats, nylon argyle socks, like someone’s idea of an encyclopedia salesman from the nineteen thirties? And why is the street behind him so fascinating, empty as a stage set, a few vans double-parked, a cat hiding under one, sometimes the flicker of the tip of a tail, sometimes the glint of the eye itself, 
voracious, ecstatic?

I will take your stony heart and give you one of flesh. The wake     sewing shut those white lips and after    when leagues     and all behind to salt fell     the grateful Spaniards prayed It became their habit     to turn eyes     sore away from surfeit     Rashes and abrasions of spring leaf  stem  vine  blossom  aphid & berry stridulant intricate and promiscuous     without the rose or borage or pomegranate embowered in flaunting silks on gauntlet cuffs     No none of that repose their soldier-love required to root 20,000 had died in Ravenna     He survived without mark to show what he knew how fear cramped each man solitary inside himself until the spark that leapt     stinging them on to violence     the grass-fire battle-frenzy the grass that kneels to its burning Then aftermath’s vegetable melee     limbs and bodies But what is not threat in this contagion and panic of green     Whores  wives  saints  sovereigns this beach     that thick-leaved mustardy shrub     Names he thinks     the names keep slipping Swift     intent     armored obdurate as beetles     no one man felt the wound of where like Adam     too late he walked *     *     * The air     flexing     began to bruise green around them the fresh human injury of them     Like flies trapped in a bottle     they didn’t know what to do and carried on doing it while bird     by bird invisible rescinded its song while the sun     a drop of vinegar in milk      curdled the sky Quiet     sumptuous as pain eased by what hand abrupt as that held in the breath exhausted just before the witch confesses Like an executioner     who ropes hair over hand to bend and lengthen the neck for his ax the wind brutalized palm trees     spun men before it loosely as leaves in a stream He linked arms with another Broken wing     Splintering oar     Chainless anchor dragging through darkness thick with sand and water and noise whistles  braying  drums  timbrels & ululations Pressed all night to the porch of the storm his ear mistook the self’s own alienated music     called it sorcery That the fury never ended he would learn walking the eye of its silence After the hurricane the stunned brilliance     like a spell or question he woke into     waking by himself     to himself and naked as a saint     to discover his ship with its ropes  tools  weapons  salves  Spain was the anchored ship now hoisted on planks of sunlight     over the palm-trees sailing out of sight     The boat sick for such mirth made by root  sap  riverbank & squirrel it would return to that green oak it once had been *     *     * In what hour of what night did he know his soul to turn a stranger to him Pilgrim     he will venture forth across uncertain fields Explorer     he will cry out He may be nothing more than a hide rigid with gore & soil to be scoured  pounded  abused by caustics and by iron and     in watered pigeon-shit     kneaded until supple for the hand— but whose     and must the hand continue to wear     or it will toughen again *     *     * Daily he marched his men into corrugations of blue distances dissolving one to another    like promises of gold & corn made by guides snatched from villages As the Spanish found new ways to die     natives loomed     naked on the horizon they looked splendid & violent as idols     Their women & children restored for ransoms of melons or fish Often some chief would repeat his good friend possessed more of each thing they desired     His noble gestures spread like balm     his speech intoxicating but so militant their hunger     his words came entire & legible to their sense as the amber & musk that steamed from these his fine furs *     *     * His dwindling force through swamps & ambush labored     circuitous     stalled like mayflies in their brevity & towarding and never fable  riches  youth  nor rest to take Only the body with its anxious extremeties     eccentric     naked not natural     from which a vein of fascinated shame opened darkly     glittering     smoldering like sea-coal     Every eye interrogated Each inquisitor humiliated by these echoes of himself     his body violating the silence *     *     * Now alone and exposed     approaching he amassed his ocherous archive of blister and of bruise     the old fabulous atlas of faith in blood & smoke redrawn Still even the most exacting map dreams omits & lies brindled with sums & suppositions Every step makes him more wilderness He goes interiorly to trade conches  sea-snails & screw-beans for red-dyed deer-tail tassels and the arrow-makers’ sinew & flint between ragged bands surrounded by enemies     enthralled by visions that command them to bury their sons alive Girls whose marriages would multiply their foes become meat for their dogs Where were the jades  turquoises  zinzibar Where the sacred monsters  cannibals  or kings fielding legions of dog-headed warriors Husbands groaned bucked by pain onto the dirt when wives gave birth & both sexes wept strenuously after any absence     overjoyed to see each other again in no essential changed Had any man traveled farther than he *     *     * Whether time is the ripening of fruit     the dying of fish & the position of stars     or all the king’s clocks ringing his will upon the quarter-hour hunger is the self’s severe eternal god

When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!" So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved, so I said, "Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair." And so he was quiet, & that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight! That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black; And by came an Angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins & set them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river and shine in the Sun. Then naked & white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind. And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father & never want joy. And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark And got with our bags & our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm; So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

On our dining table, every dish is a dime-store pattern: blue dandelions, red nasturtiums, the entire stack, a small legacy won in a 1959 coin toss by Lealand, the uncle with the long arms and legs, who pitched penny after penny at a parking lot carnival until his pockets were emptied of everything, but lint and luck. My family wouldn't buy Emporium bowls thick like heads of cabbage or soup spoons holding hand-painted water lilies; our plates, chipped and resounding, clatter at every feast. In America, we acquired what was necessary: some English to earn a living, cotton for dull work, enough noodles for a long life. My father and uncles fled China with a black leather trunk, four wool sweaters, and proud photographs of their two-story mansion. They rented on Mason, Alfred's Steakhouse clanging all night below. Great-Uncle's wife donated a lazy susan, mini Bora Bora pitchforks, and wooden bowls, rancid from salad oil—whatever she couldn't unload at her yard sale. Sundays, she invited her nephews to hang coats, change diapers, and serve finger sandwiches, told guests, ignore those farmboys, too stupid to say yes or no. The boys didn't tell her about the jars of jade or the "big house," its pond swimming with yolk-eating carp. They studied calculus and chemistry and worked after school, eighty-five cents an hour, pouring coffee at Mee Heung Bakery and ironing pleats in sweat shops towards a new life: chicken and fresh fish every day, wonton noodle soup and television at midnight, Grace Kelly on weekends.When I get off the boat, America is a beautiful country, my father says as he watches Uncle Lealand, the organoleptic specialist, dish up the leftover black bean lobster for his cats.

It is too much a part of things, even though the source is not within. In small American cities with and without universities, it keeps a constant presence in the Confucian sense, the inner arriving to match the outer, spirit not separate from matter (the latter illusion left by the missions the people have made such fine use of). There are times when you have to pretend to embrace an idea or befriend your adversaries. If constantly misinterpreted, use the mystery as currency. You have to start somewhere. Be wise: depart from where they’ve already put you. A country itself can’t betray you.