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Down at the end of Baxter Street, where Five Points slum used to be, just north of Tombs, is a pocket park. On these summer days the green plane trees’ leaves linger heavy as a noon mist above the men playing mah jongg—more Chinese in the air than English.  The city’s composed of village greens; we rely on the Thai place on the corner: Tom Kha for a cold, jasmine tea for fever, squid for love, Duck Yum for loneliness.  Outside, the grove of heat, narrow streets where people wrestle rash and unseen angels; inside, the coolness of a glen and the wait staff in their pale blue collars offering ice water. Whatever you’ve done or undone, there’s a dish for you to take out or eat in: spice for courage, sweet for chagrin.

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark. Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar; And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk By beech and yew and perishing juniper Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter, The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper, Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark The Combe looks since they killed the badger there, Dug him out and gave him to the hounds, That most ancient Briton of English beasts.

Bending, I bow my head and lay my hands upon her hair, combing, and think how women do this for each other. My daughter’s hair curls against the comb, wet and fragrant— orange parings. Her face, downcast, is quiet for one so young. I take her place. Beneath my mother’s hands I feel the braids drawn up tight as piano wires and singing, vinegar-rinsed. Sitting before the oven I hear the orange coils tick the early hour before school. She combed her grandmother Mathilda’s hair using a comb made out of bone. Mathilda rocked her oak wood chair, her face downcast, intent on tearing rags in strips to braid a cotton rug from bits of orange and brown. A simple act Preparing hair. Something women do for each other, plaiting the generations.

A cento Is there no when where this dream will rest? Blue smoke, wings, a plague of  walls, the city motionless, mass of mind and angst rising in the brilliance of a cloudless light [le ciel, c’est mauve comme la lavande]. Everything turns in the quiet leisure of disaster: a kind of innocence now supernatural darkness floating, trees shaking, waterways swollen under a livid sky, storm clouds forming in the blink of an eye. The thought of you is performative: blonde hair, pale complexion, downcast jewels for eyes. Your dreadful martyrdom runs its course, written in mud and butter: the human instant, in which you sing yourself full-throated. Honey, ginger, flared saffron, graywhite momentous rhythm of sea, barbarous smell of wet earth, ransacking or ravaged flowers, the landfill site, shit-hole, killing ground from which we sup as shaking, hiccuping drunks. To forfeit wisdom, atone for sins undone: the allegorical hand thrust into torture, noise, shadows of men. Between the lines, against the clock, this does not make, does not make a difference to them. This age [our age] demands an image of its accelerated grimace — an old bitch gone in the teeth, the ultimate cunt — our botched civilization, our grave in the sky: last jizz of consciousness. I could have, now, blown my fucking brains out, but for a sweet shimmer of reason, blood, lone bells in gritty belfries, the shallows of the sea, the surprise of days which slide under sunlight, the soul gathered up, exhaled as rings of smoke. Clay is the word and clay is the flesh. You drape your body against my body, like a sheet of mirrored glass; you remain,comme le dit Flaubert, melancholique devant son rêve accompli. — The word “red” is not. Forever in lust, forever in heat of fire and flood. Mule-bray, pig-grunt, bawdy cackle and the stomping of feet to the beat of some undone family portrait — bad teeth, bad eyes, beer and paint cans — the name and date split in soft slate. Money makes an inverse difference to distance, when I lift her back to me now: nothing there but that pale curly head, working a machine up and down, an ochre autumn merging into twilight. I read much of the night. Guns click and spit and split up timber, until the river’s tent is broken: old kettles, old bottles, a broken can, old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut who kept the till. Dreams nourished with tears, the sweet kinks of fists, light rain falling as mist. The hours after you are gone are a lead white morning of  hard, new ice, the snow drift of that which is left unspoken. Care and great sadness are both a burden. No gods, but a black swastika and no sky but grinding water, gasping wind, the wares of carthage, girls with peacock eyes. The churn of stale words staining the heart again: bleached wood massed as bones. Your body is white as anemone petals, your skin is stone smooth, we [as cold as the dead they load like a pile of  baskets, mound of refuse, the sweepings of a street] are pressed close together, swaying. Merely the despaired occasion of wordshed made keener by blessed rage. Scrape away the prison coating, the itchy sea; drink from this glass of pure, real, resplendent blood, its malediction, freshly soiled and snug. It’s a question of altitude, probably, walking along your eyelid again, towards your tear duct. This dance of fire that touches our lips, scorches our tongues and pulls out the thin beaten tin of my squally voice. O technosociety, where memory is tolerated, barely, as real estate on which to mount steeples of rust, lay fresh mowed grass, burn gasoline: anything so long as there’s a margin and little but commerce between us. We never have pure space in front of us, rather: slight bondage, the world’s halter, this fashion for dressing or setting our hair ablaze until we’re ash and ash in the heat of a blank but infinitely scrolling screen, flared back to scratch. We begin and end with a groan, the tongue’s comfortable wetness, sureness of soul and fluttering lips. Then: lords of unquiet, quiet sojourn, each atom which belongs to you belongs to me. All abandoned, the last rig broken, the staggering shadows of trees, fence posts, gutted cars, faces blurred and Sienese grave. I wish that I could speak only of  it all, the voices of children singing. A chapel, in spite of  it all.

Stick that bumbershoot in elephant’s-foot brolly stand behind the big door. Mind your manners at High Tea. Hi, you. High ve- locity hailstones cream passersby beyond the panes. I dream of Jeannie, starring Bar- bara Eden, of Eden, star- ring Eve and Adam, of Adam Cartwright, a.k.a. the let-'

Come into animal presence. No man is so guileless as the serpent. The lonely white rabbit on the roof is a star twitching its ears at the rain. The llama intricately folding its hind legs to be seated not disdains but mildly disregards human approval. What joy when the insouciant armadillo glances at us and doesn't quicken his trotting across the track into the palm brush. What is this joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do? That the snake has no blemish, that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings in white star-silence? The llama rests in dignity, the armadillo has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest. Those who were sacred have remained so, holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence of bronze, only the sight that saw it faltered and turned from it. An old joy returns in holy presence.

Come slowly – Eden! Lips unused to Thee – Bashful – sip thy Jessamines – As the fainting Bee – Reaching late his flower, Round her chamber hums – Counts his nectars – Enters – and is lost in Balms.

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete, And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son. Lo, ’tis autumn, Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind, Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines, (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?) Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds, Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well. Down in the fields all prospers well, But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call, And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away. Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling, She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap. Open the envelope quickly, O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d, O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul! All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only, Sentences broken,gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, At present low, but will soon be better.

[First Setting] Comin thro' the rye, poor body, Comin thro' the rye, She draigl't a' her petticoatie Comin thro' the rye. [ CHORUS. ] Oh Jenny 's a' weet poor body Jenny 's seldom dry, She draigl't a' her petticoatie Comin thro' the rye. Gin a body meet a body Comin thro' the rye, Gin a body kiss a body — Need a body cry. Oh Jenny 's a' weet, &c. Gin a body meet a body Comin thro' the glen; Gin a body kiss a body — Need the warld ken! Oh Jenny 's a' weet, &c. [Second Setting] Gin a body meet a body, comin thro' the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, need a body cry; Ilka body has a body, ne'er a ane hae I; But a' the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I. Gin a body meet a body, comin frae the well, Gin a body kiss a body, need a body tell; Ilka body has a body, ne'er a ane hae I, But a the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I. Gin a body meet a body, comin frae the town, Gin a body kiss a body, need a body gloom; Ilka Jenny has her Jockey, ne'er a ane hae I, But a' the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I.

As long as you believe in miracles You watch the sun fall into the sea Every evening Then you turn your back and sink Among the ferns sparkling from a moon or from the other Night up to your knees under the vault of cries. The pubescent monkeys, the adolescent pumas Contemplate the slender crescent Of the earth In the eyes of a dead viper That knots on the asphalt The alpha of a future alphabet. It’s the end of night the mosquitoes Place themselves on your forehead and die with you In the ruins of your dreams erected By the distant suggestions of cities Where you wish to find an empty Bed to die in. The cathedrals the cinemas the soliloquies The beggar’s ear glued to the violin Music To be lovesick when the songs All temple prostitutes all rotgut for two cents Are going to end up in the pink slit of a jukebox. Hope is under the hand that weak flesh Groped massaged turgescent with eyes shut Comes and goes Let’s keep knotted kisses to ourselves for a long time Until another day erases The trace of each passing.