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C. Damon, come drive thy flocks this way. D. No, ’tis too late; they went astray. C. I have a grassy scutcheon spied, Where Flora blazons all her pride. The grass I aim to feast thy sheep: The flowers I for thy temples keep. D. Grass withers; and the flowers too fade. C. Seize the short joys then, ere they vade, Seest thou that unfrequented cave? D. That den? C. Love’s Shrine. D. But virtue’s grave. C. In whose cool bosom we may lie Safe from the sun. D. Not heaven’s eye. C. Near this, a fountain’s liquid bell Tinkles within the concave shell. D. Might a soul bathe there and be clean, Or slake its drought? C. What is’t you mean? D. These once had been enticing things, Clorinda, pastures, caves, and springs. C. And what late change? D. The other day Pan met me. C. What did great Pan say? D. Words that transcend poor shepherds’ skill, But he e’er since my songs does fill: And his name swells my slender oat. C. Sweet must Pan sound in Damon’s note. D. Clorinda’s voice might make it sweet. C. Who would not in Pan’s praises meet? CHORUS Of Pan the flowery pastures sing, Caves echo, and the fountains ring. Sing then while he doth us inspire; For all the world is our Pan’s choir.

From Baden, or what’s left of it, pursue a long, smooth curve of road that skirts the northern flood wall to parallel a palisade of channel markers sunk in earth, the folly of a cement works. Its blank silos overlook a pit of argillaceous shale, the fine and fossilized remains of bivalves, sponges, spines of shark, quarried and burnt with limestone charge to alchemize a binder of brick and the city’s shallow, brittle crust. Around a bend, the riverbed swings wide to open a fetch of field. Shadows skim its mucky thaw as juncos, whisked about by the wind on courses neither fixed nor free, give but a quick metallic chink. Behind you, rain has wrapped the bluffs and scumbled limbs of sycamores. Ahead, each bend assumes the name of a gaudy packet run aground, or snagged and sunk, or blown to bits: for one, the side-wheel Amazon, pluperfect wheelhouse painted green, that struck a honey-locust pike still rooted deep in river mud and tore its hull from stem to stern. Down in minutes! Within the month an island silted up behind. A flock of luggage floated south, remarked by those on Water Street loafing before the trading post and the barbershop of Madame Krull. She can eternally be found at work in her elaborate room toujours prêt to clip and coif or wield her razor with great skill for those who favor her with their chins. The scent of ginger tonic blends with that of borscht, its acrid tang, consumed behind a wooden screen as Illinois grows dark. In this, her second year since coming west.

(...after my Mother’s death) Here not long enough after the hospital happened I find her closet lying empty and stop my play And go in and crane up at three blackwire hangers Which quiver, airy, released. They appear to enjoy Their new distance, cognizance born of the absence Of anything else. The closet has been cleaned out Full-flush as surgeries where the hangers could be Amiable scalpels though they just as well would be Themselves, in basements, glovelessly scraping uteri But, here, pure, transfigured heavenward, they’re Birds, whose wingspans expand by excluding me. Their Range is enlarged by loss. They’d leave buzzards Measly as moths: and the hatshelf is even higher!— As the sky over a prairie, an undotted desert where Nothing can swoop sudden, crumple in secret. I’ve fled At ambush, tag, age: six, must I face this, can I have my hide-and-seek hole back now please, the Clothes, the thicket of shoes, where is it? Only The hangers are at home here. Come heir to this Rare element, fluent, their skeletal grace sings Of the ease with which they let go the dress, slip, Housecoat or blouse, so absolvingly. Free, they fly Trim, triangular, augurs leapt ahead from some geometric God who soars stripped (of flesh, it is said): catnip To a brat placated by model airplane kits kids My size lack motorskills for, I wind up glue-scabbed, Pawing goo-goo fingernails, glaze skins fun to peer in as Frost-i-glass doors ... But the closet has no windows, Opaque or sheer: I must shut my eyes, shrink within To peep into this wall. Soliciting sleep I’ll dream Mother spilled and cold, unpillowed, the operating- Table cracked to goad delivery: its stirrups slack, Its forceps closed: by it I’ll see mobs of obstetrical Personnel kneel proud, congratulatory, cooing And oohing and hold the dead infant up to the dead Woman’s face as if for approval, the prompted Beholding, tears, a zoomshot kiss. White-masked Doctors and nurses patting each other on the back, Which is how in the Old West a hangman, if He was good, could gauge the heft of his intended ... Awake, the hangers are sharper, knife-’n’-slice, I jump Helplessly to catch them to twist them clear, Mis-shape them whole, sail them across the small air Space of the closet. I shall find room enough here By excluding myself; by excluding myself, I’ll grow.

This trace, if it exists, is alms for delusion. An arch uncurls from the floor scented with the scent of a tapestry, housed here. I recall the hour but not its passage unless dream captures and ties it to sleep: a fat bellhop smiles, shows me to the tower where I can watch the departure. But some days settle so that nothing crosses the horizon; stare as I will, no star needles the air. Now I am left on the outskirts of a forest hemmed in by wheat where plump trees hide the image, its symmetry shot up and blown across the ground like feathers. The unicorn, the grail, blue and red wings of kneeling musicians, these are embroidered elsewhere. Perseverance was crowned. Hope and Pity prayed for success. How fast is this camera? Can it record a trace? There was a voyage. Four mounted horses strain against centuries. To each is allotted: dust kicked up, smoke, plumage.

1 “Always Be Closing,” Liam told us— abc of real estate, used cars, and poetry. Liam the dandy loved Brooks Brothers shirts, double-breasted suits, bespoke shoes, and linen jackets. On the day Liam and Tree married in our backyard, Liam and I wore Chuck’s burgundy boho-prep high-tops that Liam bought on Fifth Avenue. 2 When the rain started, we moved indoors and Liam read a Quartet aloud. T.S. Eliot turned old and frail at sixty, pale, preparing for death. Then poets of new generations died—Frank O’Hara first, then Jim Wright with throat cancer in a Bronx hospice, Sylvia Plath beside the oven, Thom Gunn of an overdose, Denise 3 Levertov, Bob Creeley, Jane Kenyon... In a New York bar, Liam told me eccentric, affectionate stories about a road trip in Tree’s country of Montana, and the joy they felt in the abundance of their marriage. At Bennington Tree said, “Fourteen years after the wedding in your backyard, I love Liam with my entire heart.” 4 Liam’s face changed quickly as he spoke, eyes and mouth erupting with gusto as he improvised his outrageous, cheerful, inventive obscenities. When I first met him—I expounded at a young poet’s do—his bearded face was handsome and expressionless. He would not defer to a poet fifty years old! After a few months 5 he was revising my lines for me, making the metaphors I couldn’t. Even now, working at poems, I imagine for a moment Liam disassembling them. A year ago he watched the progress of age turn me skeletal, pale flesh hanging loosely in folds from my arms, and thin rib-bones like grates above a sagging belly. 6 His body would never resemble my body. Four or five times a week we wrote letters back and forth, talking about class structure, about how Tree took charge over the Academy of American Poets, about poems and new attacks on free speech... When I won a notorious prize, Liam sent me eighty-one notions 7 about projects I might undertake. Number fifty-six instructed me: “Urge poets to commit suicide.” His whole life he spoke of suicide lightly, when he wasn’t preserving the First Amendment from Jesse Helms, or enduring two colon cancers, or watching films, or chatting with Tree, or undergoing heart surgeries. 8 If he walked their dog Keeper one block, he had to take nitroglycerin. When Jane was dying, Liam and Tree drove up to say goodbye. I wheelchaired Jane to a pile of books by her chair to find the color plate of Caillebotte’s shadowy kitchen garden at Yerres for the jacket of Otherwise, when Tree would design it. I think of Jane’s 9 horror if she were alive to know that on August fifteenth Liam pulled the shotgun’s trigger. The night before, wearing a tux over a yellow silk shirt, he danced with Tree once again, before bed and the morning’s murder. He left Tree alone and desolate but without anger. Tree knew Liam did what he planned and needed to do.

O zummer clote! when the brook’s a-glidèn So slow an’ smooth down his zedgy bed, Upon thy broad leaves so seäfe a-ridèn The water’s top wi’ thy yollow head, By alder sheädes, O, An’ bulrush beds, O, Thou then dost float, goolden zummer clote! The grey-bough’d withy’s a leänèn lowly Above the water thy leaves do hide; The bènden bulrush, a-swaÿèn slowly, Do skirt in zummer thy river’s zide; An’ perch in shoals, O, Do vill the holes, O, Where thou dost float, goolden zummer clote! Oh! when thy brook-drinkèn flow’r’s a-blowèn, The burnèn zummer’s a-zettèn in; The time o’ greenness, the time o’ mowèn, When in the häy-vield, wi’ zunburnt skin, The vo’k do drink, O, Upon the brink, O, Where thou dost float, goolden zummer clote! Wi’ eärms a-spreadèn, an’ cheäks a-blowèn, How proud wer I when I vu’st could swim Athirt the deep pleäce where thou bist growèn, Wi’ thy long more vrom the bottom dim; While cows, knee-high, O, In brook, wer nigh, O, Where thou dost float, goolden zummer clote! Ov all the brooks drough the meäds a-windèn, Ov all the meäds by a river’s brim, There’s nwone so feäir o’ my own heart’s vindèn As where the maïdens do zee thee zwim, An’ stan’ to teäke, O, Wi’ long-stemm’d reäke, O, Thy flow’r afloat, goolden zummer clote!

These of living emanate a formidable light, Which is equal to death, and when used Gives increase eternally. What fortifies in separate thought Is not drawn by wind or by man defiled. So whispers the parable of doubleness. As it is necessary not to submit To power which weakens the hidden forms; It is extraordinarily more essential Not to deny welcome to these originating forces When they gather within our heat To give us habitation. The one life must be attempted with the other, That we may embark upon the fiery work For which we were certainly made. What has been separated from the mother, Must again be joined; for we were born of spirit, And to spirit all mortal things return, As it is necessary in the method of earth. So sings the parable of singleness. My comforter does not conceal his face; I have seen appearances that were not marshalled By sleep. Perhaps I am to be stationed At the nets which move through this completing sea. Or I have hunting on my sign. Yet the ground is visible, The center of our seeing. (The houses rest Like sentinels on this hawking star. Two women are bathing near a trestle; Their bodies dress the world in golden birds; The skin of their throats is a dancing flute. . . How alter or change? How properly Find an exact equation? What is flying Anywhere that is more essential to our quest? Even the lake. . . boat walking on its blue streets; Organ of thunder muttering in the sky. . . A tiger Standing on the edge of a plowed field. . . What is necessary? What is inseparable to know? The children seek silvery-pretty caves. . . What are we to teach?) The distance is not great To worlds of magnificent joy or nowhere.

Walking back to the office after lunch, I saw Hans. “Mister Isham, Mister Isham,” He called out in his hurry, “Herr Wegner needs you. A woman waiting for a border pass Took poison, she is dead, and the police Are there to take the body.” In the hall, The secretaries stood outside their doors Silently waiting with Wegner. “Sir,” he said, “It was her answer on the questionnaire, A clerk for the Gestapo. So it was.” Within the outer office, by the row Of wooden chairs, one lying on its side, On the discolored brown linoleum floor Under a GI blanket was the lost Unmoving shape; uncovered, from a fold, A dirty foot half out of a dirty shoe, Once white, heel bent, the sole worn through, the skin Bruised red and calloused, uncut toenails curved And veined like an old ivory. No one spoke. Police stood at attention by a stretcher. After an empty moment, suddenly Bent over as if taken by a cramp, I sobbed out loud and, on my uniform, Vomited up my lunch—over the tie, The polished buttons and insignia, The little strips of color and the green Eisenhower jacket with its Eagle patch, The taut pants in a crease, the glistening jump-boots— Vomiting and still sobbing, like a child Awakened in the night, and sick. Wegner and Hans Held me, murmuring, “Ach, dear sir, the war Is over and not over, such things happen.” While no one else moved, Frau Schmidt brought a towel To clean me off before Hans walked me back, My arm across his shoulders and I retelling The story of how, near Zell am See, we found, Hung from a tree in leaf, the final sack Of bones, in rotted Wehrmacht green. In the house An SS lord had furnished for his mistress— Deep sofas, Persian rugs, and velvet drapes— Frau König took my clothes. In my own room, Wearing the Gucci robe Bouchard had taken From a fine house before we got to Ulm, Instead of lying down to rest, I studied The book I read for German with Frau Schmidt, Goethe’s Italian Journey . Through the window, The Watchman’s upper slopes were shadows, green And purple with the afternoon, its snows Melting, its double peaks the victory sign.

I once hit clothespins for the Chicago Cubs. I'd go out after supper when the wash was in and collect clothespins from under four stories of clothesline. A swing-and-a-miss was a strike-out; the garage roof, Willie Mays, pounding his mitt under a pop fly. Bushes, a double, off the fence, triple, and over, home run. The bleachers roared. I was all they ever needed for the flag. New records every game— once, 10 homers in a row! But sometimes I'd tag them so hard they'd explode, legs flying apart in midair, pieces spinning crazily in all directions. Foul Ball! What else could I call it? The bat was real.

look like birds. Scrawny winter   birds   balanced by   two   sarong tail   feathers.   Some   look west, others north- east   toward   the mountain.   Stiff in the   cold & remote.   They  haven’t  been   loved enough.   They grow thinner   and thinner   in their   woody streaked   feathers,   held together  only   by the exposed   spiral   of   internal organs.   After  a  while ,   the sun comes out and   all o f   the birds,   clutching   wire,   turn an     electric            silver. This is     hopeful,,    but doesn’t   last.         Clouds take a  break   from   one   another , , re- convene.   A half-inch of snow is rolled out   with   perfect    evenness across               the picnic   table,   as though someone made a blank for what was coming.    The nice thing about   clothespin    birds   is             they   don’t “excrete.” Jays   &   grosbeaks   &   finches &      mourning    doves    + ravens   leave their   paintings everywhere , on   benches & limbs ,, , on fallen pine needle fascicles \|/ feldspar & quartz _ __ though   all  has  now   become gesso    beneath    snow.   After   a  certain amount   of feeling hopelessly under- accomplished,   you look at   your   nails and   want   to paint them.         Is this how   birds feel?                 No.         Birds fly and   don’t    look down.      Or,   they   sit   `’’   amid branches and    peck   at the   brittle   waffled   bark & tiny    bugs    buried in   the marrow.  .<sszt sszt sszt.<   You, too, peck.  Familiar letters    on t he   keys have   lost their    definition        and   resemble   finger- tip-size   daubs of   bird   paint   on back- lit platforms.   You   recall the s   e&m only   via   entrenched   neural   pathways , while   the l and c continue to morph   into tiny   archaic symbols.    As though,  the  unconscious is forming      a message.       ( Always   “it”   has   something unearthly     to say. ) Except the unconscious is the earth ,    it’s   just   we don’t  know   how   she               does it. St. Thomas of Aquinas  got  a delirium hit of   t hat   at the end and decided  to   marry   it.   Each day your thumbs   grow   paler,   nails   coarser,   evolving toward   the ptero- dactyl: part  reptile,  part   bird. As  a  child pterodactyls   scared you,         which meant they   had  your             attention.   Refusing to stay in   the   lineage,         they became their  own            form. They had  an  iguana       for     a     father and  a   pelican   for  a    mom, crispy  and  dipped  in  molasses. If you were big enough you could   eat   them the  way   some people   eat grass- hoppers.  Compulsive hole- punchers,  if less   manic could be    sculptors, though it requires d-e-t-a-c-h-m-e-n-t to see  it    that way , , if  you  are a   lilac   leaf   sketching   outside the   library   window.        What are those    books doing   in there   together ?!                  Nothing ! When a   new    one arrives,   they   fall  in love,,  one   by one.  Inside  their  covers, a   million   leaves, each w/  black   growth.     A pattern of       fungus , the  shed  skin  of          snakes  &  dna traces.   Like   bird   poop, but   more orderly     and the message is   see- through. Don’t you wish    you   could   lift   the   letters and   release them       halfway back   to the  liquid   state ,, ,   before they   got   connected   to the   circuitry?   It might be    kind   of relaxing.  You might be as good of a painter as a         cuckoo    bird.    A few nights   ago you  dreamt   you were very     pregnant & in need of    a  place       to give   birth.   Your  boyfriend had   left         you     and  2    therapists let   you    live         w/ them because   you    resembled   their     daughter  — though they were     suspicious.   Who    can blame  them? As for your nails, find  a     mani- curist,   someone  who   knows   what they are doing.  Druids never  lived   here, that was    Europe,    but  you and   the   sage- brush are   distantly   related      via     microbial ancestors;         in spite of    yourself,   you are surrounded by   family.   \\|/