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In heaven I mean to go and talk to Pythagoras and Socrates and Valerius Publicola. I shan’t care a bit for Rosie there, she needn’t think it. What will grey eyes and red cheeks be good for there? — John Ruskin, letter to Susan Beever, from Assisi, Sacristan’s Cell, June 25, 1874 To-day, being my sixty-first birthday, I would ask leave to say a few words to the friends who care for me, and the readers who are anxious about me, touching the above-named illness itself. For a physician’s estimate of it, indeed, I can only refer them to my physicians. But there were some conditions of it which I knew better than they could: namely, first, the precise and sharp distinction between the state of morbid inflammation of brain which gave rise to false visions (whether in sleep, or trance, or waking, in broad daylight, with perfect knowledge of the real things in the room, while yet I saw others that were not there), and the not morbid, however dangerous, states of more or less excited temper, and too much quickened thought, which gradually led up to the illness, accelerating in action during the eight or ten days preceding the actual giving way of the brain. — John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera Letter 88 (February 8, 1880) Too fast and far again! by much; the impetus of phrase running away with me. — John Ruskin, additional note no. 54 to Modern Painters Vol. 2 (1883 revised ed.) My dear little birds, before me on my desk this morning where I sit preparing tomorrow’s lesson lies a copy of The Witches’ Rout by Agostino de’ Musi — Agostino Veneziano your teachers will call him — wherein a carriage made of dragon bones and drawn by two naked figures is depicted making topsy-turvy progress through a jungle scattering goats & geese & winged skeletal reptiles and there, look now, there atop it all the witch squats as one at stool — manly forearm, muscular shoulder,pendulis mammis— the narrow dugs it is her business to possess — filthy hair streaming contra natura— out in a headwind of mephitic vapors    ... Time out of mind such creatures have impressed the dreams of those who live, as it were, by watchfires, fearful of neighbors, fearful that the law they hammered into whatsoever shape as pleased them may yet prove versatile — their sensual rites & ceremonies, novelties & conceits; their pharisaical holiness    ...    — and this is but a scholar’s imitation you will say, rude work though of  a fine school — a fine school be it allowed, and good enough to lose itself  beside the master’s — & yet & yet steady the hand that hovers over the acid-bitten cliché steady the elbow behind this engraving on paper Fro spot my spyryt þer sprang in space so now Piazza Sta Maria del Pianto, Rome (1840). A pensive study of old clothes sun-sipped dry in the Jews’ quarter, hanging out of a marble architrave smashed & built into a piece of Roman frieze moldering into broken brickwork projected over wooden windows propped on gray entablature. A vestige of yet-legible inscription: nomine fortuna .No important lines, no beauty of object. A pendent hodgepodge of contrasted feeling cheesecaked into picturesque febrility. An episode. A grief in, as it were, parenthesis. A match without a marriage, as after news of an engagement. A church embedded sans façade among the common sort of houses. A succor from St. Peter’s mere bewilderment & worry. Graphite heightened w/ touches of white body color on gray-green paper. Beresford Chapel, Walworth: a bare, oblong, low-ceilinged barn, each brick-arched window filled with small-paned glass requiring iron bars threaded like halves of cobweb to stay true. No traceries, no clustered shafts, no vaulting. No fantasies. No perpendicular flights of aspiration. Clean lines, and severe. Pews shut-in with partitions of plain deal and neatly brass-hatched doors. No pulpit, merely a stout, four-legged box of well-grained wainscot, but decorated with a velvet cushion — crimson, with golden tassels at the corners — which formed my one resource, for when I tired of Dr. Andrews’s sermon I could watch the colors texturing the folds & creases each time he thumped it. Beresford. That’s where we worshipped: Papa, Mama, and I. Poor preparation, this, for Rouen! Rouen wardered by groups of solemn statuary clasped by stems of sculpted leafage crowned by fretted niche & fairy pediment like inextricably meshed gossamer; Rouen with her surge & foam of pious chivalry breaking on crystal cliffs to stand revealed as every hidden thing shall be, insatiable at prayer or pillage, lending grace to English rudeness, venom to Italy’s cunning    ...    Rouen with all her avarice & intricacies, gargoyles open-mawed, molten, drenching ornament down spires vertiginously pinnacled — insanae substructiones! Inutiles domos! — yet piping pastoral songs of innocence — The Palazzo Contarini-Fasan, Venice (1841). Higgledy terraced structures the colors of ice creams & sorbets w/ no bland tinting. No calligraphic decoration. Graphite, watercolor & body color. A thorough spell in the vernacular. Stone filigree spidering rhythmic tessellations w/ some scratching out. Details that become a refuge. Detail that becomes a refuge. A long-drawn replica in which new life may even now be in the offing. A sulky grandeur, by the bye. A naughty jailer. A determined postulant. A barber-pole mooring post. A dipped oar tilting  for trouble. The Doge’s tottering state stepping off on gray paper. Worn somewhat, and not a little weary, Sandro’s uncommon Fortitude, in this his first recorded work. Consider it a moment, if you please, before you pass hurriedly on to see The Birth of  Venus next door, and notice that Sandro began where you perhaps will end: with weariness. Would you have guessed that Fortitude allows (allows? approves of!) reverie? See how her fingers play in restless idleness or nervousness about her sword hilt (sword or mace? I’ve lost my notes about her    ...    ). She is no match, it may be, for the trials that are to come, yet see her armor shine in readiness, her gentle fingers apt to grip her sword (or mace) should she be called. Lips pursed and eyes averted, she has smiled, and not a little ruefully, at her fate from time to time. She has no smile today. Her quality must be borne daylong, lifelong. To flaunt it ever is not to possess it quite. See Pollaiolo’s Virtues pose and attitudinize: thus they perform their various meanings. Fortitude must contain — must be— all that she stands for. Go, see whatever the Uffizi has to tempt you; but remember Fortitude whose battle did not begin today, nor yesterday, nor on the Sunday last. Many a day has passed since it began. They are so wedded to their righteousness, those lesser Virtues, quite incapable of  being tempted. They would not dare risk complacency. She would be lost without it. But sword or mace? Go now. It is no matter. I will not need you until tomorrow morning. Ravine at Maglans (1849?). Deeper brown on brown. A limestone precipice stepped with horizontal cleavages to overlook the void. No water but a dream of water years back, far down, running harum-scarum strong enough to turn a mill. A spate become a thread. A visit out of season. A torrent bed of what must have been snow-melt now entirely dry. No stones crumble but flow, subside, rhythmic as cloud, as high-built, as unsubstantial over the long haul. Quartz strips ribboning a treed crevasse fringed w/ curled & unfurled fronds. Leaves shook to palsy by the noon wind’s spite. A rock fissured. A great fault. A graphite rock fissured in brown ink & ink wash heightened w/ flesh-toned body color on white paper. Last night St. Ursula sent me her dianthus out of her bedroom window, with her love — living dianthus, and a single dried sprig of  her other window flower, vervain    ... how many flowers are named in Genesis? Good answer! Not one. Plenty of trees, however. It was a poet planted flowerbeds that Eden might be filled with tremulous, frivolous petals — I dare say he was right, they were made to be noticed! And to see a poppy husk fall from a bursting flower is to know something of the life to come once the body has turned to dust & ashes, even as our dying breath aspires toward our Father’s house    ...    as for the trees, what can we learn of noble constancy more than we find in the pure laurel leaf, so numerable, so sequent and serene? open the envelope petals & may spill on the table where I remain preparing the lesson bruise-edged rose petals cling to my fingers dust motes dancing gnats in a sun-shaft myrrh, or a snuffbox? write to me, tell me who do you dance with oftenest, often? gray eyes & red cheeks useless in heaven undowered, garlanded with no forget-me-nots: compassed about with the forgetfulness of all the world honor unwon kind words unsaid good deeds undone: none of these, none touch me more nearly Now, if  I say “St. Ursula has sent me a pot of pinks!” some will say I have gone heartily, headily mad, but all it means is that the flowers I received of  late (from the hand of whatsoever friend or stranger) helped greatly in my work, and afterward reproved me in their own way for its failure. But how much love of mine have others lost because one poor sick child would not receive the part of love that yet belongs to her! Think now, sweet milkmaids of Albion whose face is your fortune, think of one lying still there, nearly a skeleton, and ask yourselves:We have a little sisterand she has no breasts: what shall we do for our sisterin the day of  her espousals? South Side of the Basilica of St. Mark’s, Venice, from the Loggia of the Ducal Palace (c.1851). An eerie vantage. A capricious helter-skelter variety of application, quickening details of watercolor passing  for time-veined marble scaled-up from a daguerreotype. An echo’s volume. Shadows lilt & flourish over chessboard floor tiles. A kind of hectic color. Disallowance of perspective. Sculpted relief without recession. Megrims & mysteries; conceits & divertisements. The uncapped St. Jean d’Acre’s pillar giving on to the southern portico. A Byzantine capital. A sonata on a virginal. Graphite & watercolor heightened w/ white on three jointed pieces of paper. Up my spirit leapt, so glad to shed this gross flesh and have done! My ghost, given up by the grace of God, was led where marvels are counted common. I climbed to where cliff-top meets cloud — vertiginous heights no man has known — my soul drawn on toward a wood decked with countless jewels & stones. It is hard to credit a sight so fine as the wash of  light in which they shone: woman never wove a gown so dearly adorned, so lit with splendor. In splendor, cliffs of crystal stood crisp as ice, clear & clean. At their foot, a forest spread: the trees were touched with a red-blue sheen and leaves of  burnished silver slid quivering to & fro between limbs that shimmered like blue jade each time a light-gleam touched the scene. The gravel underfoot was strewn with gems, and the sun seemed quite outshone by those precious, oriental stones so dearly adorned, so lit with splendor. The splendor of the grove was such that my grief left me — it lifted clear; the fragrance of the fruit so fresh, I found I needed no other fare. Birds flew together, branch to branch like flecks of flame — now here now there; no human symphony can match, nor voice nor string delight the ear with such a song: they blessed the air with a sweet accord that swooned & shone with harmonies you will never hear but there where all is lit with splendor. So adorned in splendor was that forest where I met my fate, a cunning man could not devise a fitting way to tell of it. Climbing pear trees, apple trees; browsing wonders — pretty sport! And soon the flowers & fields & hedgerows turned beautifully intricate with burns & water gardens. Bright as burnished gold the fellside shone where I trailed a stream that ran with light, dearly adorned & lit with splendor. But a greater splendor was yet to come: a riverbank of  beryl ablaze where water swept & swirled in a foam of  hurrying murmurs & confused airs. The stream bed glinted with a gleam like sunlight filtered through stained glass or winter starlight, when it may seem we’re all alone when the clouds pass. Each pebble bright as Hesperus: sapphire, emerald — each one shone with a light too bright for similes, dearly adorned & lit with splendor. Study of Gneiss Rock, Glenfinlas (1853–54). A living witness. A verticality more smooth than the water over wch it rears. Glib-channeled water rushing; dry rock dripping — fluid, labial rock, less still than the wildflowers & feathered grasses that cling in unguessed cracks & overhang. Mapped lichens. Lampblack, body color. A cumbrous slab. An unobtrusive majesty. A happenstance long sought before seen, loved long before understood. A lesson of devotion to be found always, found but once. An obstinacy gladdened by the river’s flux, the ice floe’s pluck & laving. Pen & ink over graphite on wove paper w/ some scratching out. In Santa Croce, here we are well quit of restoration, for who cares about this slab with its poor bit of sculpture? An old man in the deeply-folded cap worn by the scholars & gentlemen of  Florence c.1300–1500, dead, a book upon his breast, and over it his hands lie folded. At his feet, the legend: .bordered { width: 500px; height: 200px; padding: 20px; border: 2px solid black; } temporibvs • hic • svis • phylosopye • atq • medicine • cvlmen • fvit • et magister galilevs • degalileis • olim • bonaivtis • qvi etiam • svmmo • inmagistratv • miro • qvodam • modo • rem • pvblicam dilexit cvivs • sancte • memorie • bene acte • vitepie • benedictvs • filivs • hvnc • tvmv lvm • patri • sibi • svis • & • posteris • edidit The worn face, still the old man’s perfect portrait — though one struck out by a master’s chisel at a venture, just so, with a few rough touches; the falling drapery of  his citizen’s cap subtle beyond description, with the choice of folds exquisite in its ornamental pattern; the carpet he lies on almost uninjured, elaborate with fringe & frond relieving the severity of the figure    ... and see now, see how the cushion’s nearly-perfect tassels balance to fill the angles of the stone — Study of a Peacock’s Breast Feather (1873). A single plume, painted of its natural size. One iridescent throb transitioning from the active plume’s obliquity to the decorative’s dualed symmetry. An uncertain correspondence w/ a heart-shaped flower petal. A cold thrill: a pang as of a nice deep wasp sting. Moss green moving via jade to emerald, indigo to lapis lazuli: as much as is allowed, having neither hocus-pocus nor heaven to dip a brush in. A heraldic emblem; watch & ward against incipient commodity. A lost key to a blue box for blue girls w/ gray eyes. Watercolor & body color on paper. whirrrrrrr-r-r-r-r-r-r pink! pink! pink! cherry-erry-erry pew-pew-pew-pew-poor-pew-pew the chaffinches chirp but feebly; this June snow discomposes them Coniston bright as glass ill-cast by an undiscerning hand wave-lines showing like flaws in planes of fine crystal unsteady, unstill troubling & troubled What is it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven? Child, according to this morning’s Spectator ’tis nothing but the filtration of money from above downwards — an oft-observed phenomenon concessum propter duritiem cordis a thing allowed and properly recorded in our holy book of double entry I mean St. Usura’s Gospel of  Filth wherein we learn his doctrine of arithmetic that 2 + 2 = 5    ... O we are so humane, forsooth, we are so wise, that whereas our ancestors had tar barrels for witches we have them for everybody else — and we will have our cauldrons cooled, please Hecate, after Mr. Darwin’s theory with baboon blood! Occulted by daylight we will drive the witches’ trade ourselves as, once, I saw a boy with his basket of rotten figs poor little costermonger before the south façade of the Ducal Palace stooping to cry Fighiaie! Fighiaie!Inibito a chiunque il vendere frutti cattivi 19th June, 1516 (i.e. before that nobody thought of doing so) as, more than once, I have seen the girls at the windows: poor girls at the windows, in the alleyways, in the slums by the Euston Hotel, by the railway lines, take Camden Rd. toward the canal basin, lift your eyes, do but lift your eyes as you leave the hall, gentlemen, and you will mark them, they hold themselves liberally, knowing our likings, poor girls, nothing to sell but everything; nothing to sell but themselves I dewyne, fordolked of luf-daungere too fast & far, boiled to rags by morbid violence — No they cannot touch me for coyning me so misby — so misby — so misby me wish me was a clergyman tellin lies all day & Flint — & Tukup — & But — cujus sancte memorie those rich-left heirs Fighiaie! O Love, sane as the proud flesh about a healing wound in the side of my nation that yet may pass at a crisis into morbific substance, let this man work. O Love, give us work and set us to it, for we are corrigible: O fettle us for we are not after all entirely corrigible & stay our hand when we would set our soul upon a cast: teach us how to give & hazard all we hath upon your coming, for the soul cannot be bargained otherwise — only lost. Impregnable to our economies whatever the deceiver promises, the soul is not for sale. And now, the cost diligently accounted for, the sum entered in the ledger, see this bound and shelved in sequence where it may be found by any who enquire, should any come    ... Love sets no term. Love schedules its appearances according to no clock of ours: to moon-bewildered waves we each of us receive our summons, unreluctant. Let walk upon them all who can. ...    came Phaedra then, and Procris, next Ariadnè, fairest of all, whose daddy’s mind was a slaughterhouse bright Ariadnè whom Theseus once from Crete to the tilled acres of sacred Athens led — nor had he the joy of  her, his heart’s desire, poor Ariadnè fair, moon-bewildered — false Dionys̄us witnessed against her; Artěmis slew her    ... O, feed her with apricocks & dewberries, with purple grapes, green figs & mulberries Is she not with me here among the hawthorn blossom? Diodati, a year with no summer, and the world was void — þe fyrre in þe fryth — she was the Universe At dusk pipistrelles flit like black rags torn at the edge bonfire cinders riding the vortex spiraling circuits all round the terrace all day have I sat here preparing the lesson My dear little birds, did you not see the gleam of sunshine yesterday? Hadst thou but seen her in it bareheaded, barefoot between the laurels & the primrose bank Moss & Wild Strawberry (1873). Gentle, hesitant line. A suggestion in the genitive. A secret in midsummer. A slackening deft moss nested in cleaved stone. Traces of body color on gray-blue paper trefoiled w/ dewy sequins. Seekings. Rooting a subtle declivity in the rock revealed now by a berry’s posture. A gaze darkening where lines triangulate palely. A beckoning. A suggestive gesture.

Left a hole on fire agony or was it the sun on the banks and near duets? Eagles with the white wine of the sun clink and spill, tall grass over head and heels . . . Space of hell: shy, inscribed already but alone— I think I can be that again, a new hole in the ongoing flute. In a leap, the country glows— to hone the fate that wonder exacts, to go netted through that much, so heavy as paperweights angels land square on chaparral nerves. And since names must give in spades, out of sorts like these, your reactions may swell great fountain lips— a promise that a wish will purge or pennies caravan the safe return hearts cross.

Clean the spittoons, boy. Detroit, Chicago, Atlantic City, Palm Beach. Clean the spittoons. The steam in hotel kitchens, And the smoke in hotel lobbies, And the slime in hotel spittoons: Part of my life. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar, Two dollars a day. Hey, boy! A nickel, A dime, A dollar, Two dollars Buy shoes for the baby. House rent to pay. Gin on Saturday, Church on Sunday. My God! Babies and gin and church And women and Sunday All mixed with dimes and Dollars and clean spittoons And house rent to pay. Hey, boy! A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord. Bright polished brass like the cymbals Of King David’s dancers, Like the wine cups of Solomon. Hey, boy! A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord. A clean bright spittoon all newly polished— At least I can offer that. Com’mere, boy!

Is the governor falling From a great height? Arm in arm we fled the brassiere factory, The motion-boat stayed on the shore! I saw how round its bottom was As you walked into southern France— Upon the light hair of an arm Cigar bands lay! I kissed you then. Oh is my bar The insect of your will? The water rose, But will the buffalo on The nickel yet be still? For how can windows hold out the light In your eyes! Darling, we fled the brassiere factory In forty-eight states, Arm in arm, When human beings hung on us And you had been arrested by the cloths Were used in making, and I said, “The Goths Know such delight,” but still we fled, away Into a dinner atmosphere From all we knew, and fall asleep this day. O maintenance men, with cruel eyes, Then arm in arm we fled the listless factory! The music changed your fingers’ ends to pearl, I punched you, you foolish girl, For thanks to the metronome we got out alive, in the air Where the sun filled us with cruelty! There’s what to do Except despair, like pages! and laugh Like prawns, about the sea! Oh arm in arm we fled the industry Into an earth of banks And foolish tanks, for what bare breasts might be.

A rung’s come broken in the ladder to the mow and so one hesitates to clamber up there just to bomb a cow with dung or bother swallows from their rafter cakes. It takes a new footing some- where in the ribs’ treads, about heart- height, to climb it now. A new gap’s in the smile that smiles from the limed barn floor. There seems to come a break in the war. But soon, one of a neighbor’s sons, too young to know it was otherwise once, braves it, and soon, even with a sweater- swaddled kitten or a BB gun, all the kids can do it again, nearly at a run, like pros, and so it goes, as before.

In the peach orchard in an old bathtub the children are standing someone in a bath of salt water, and one gently attaches electrodes to the nipples of the one in the bath. Out of the weeds runs one with a rescued battery from the old motor home, which they had gotten to rev its engine like the sad bleating of a goat. If, later, anyone asks how they learned to do this, in a striped shirt one will say,Oh,I was looking for science experiments in those old textbooks someone got from the library book sale last year.

Slowly the white dream wrestle(s) to life hands shaping the salt and the foreign cornfields the cold flesh kneaded by fingers is ready for the charcoal for the black wife of heat the years of green sleeping in the volcano. the dream becomes tougher. settling into its shape like a bullfrog. suns rise and electrons touch it. walls melt into brown. moving to crisp and crackle breathing edge of the knife of the oven. noise of the shop. noise of the farmer. market. on this slab of lord. on this table w/ its oil-skin cloth on this altar of the bone. this sacrifice of isaac. warm dead. warm merchandise. more than worn merchandise life itself. the dream of the soil itself flesh of the god you break. peace to your lips. strife of the multitudes who howl all day for its saviour who need its crumbs as fish. flickering through their green element need a wide glassy wisdom to keep their groans alive and this loaf here. life now halted. more and more water add- itive. the dream less clear. the soil more distant its prayer of table. bless of lips. more hard to reach w/ penn- ies. the knife that should have cut it. the hands that should have broken open its victory of crusts at your throat. balaam watching w/ red leak -ing eyes. the rats finding only this young empty husk sharp- ening their ratchets. your wife going out on the streets. searching searching her feet tapping. the lights of the motor- cars watching watching round- ing the shape of her girdle. her back naked rolled into night into night w/out morning rolled into dead into dead w/out vision rolled into life into life w/out dream

for Wendell Berry Each face in the street is a slice of bread wandering on searching somewhere in the light the true hunger appears to be passing them by they clutch have they forgotten the pale caves they dreamed of hiding in their own caves full of the waiting of their footprints hung with the hollow marks of their groping full of their sleep and their hiding have they forgotten the ragged tunnels they dreamed of following in out of the light to hear step after step the heart of bread to be sustained by its dark breath and emerge to find themselves alone before a wheat field raising its radiance to the moon

Each night, in a space he’d make between waking and purpose, my grandfather donned his one suit, in our still dark house, and drove through Brooklyn’s deserted streets following trolley tracks to the bakery. There he’d change into white linen work clothes and cap, and in the absence of women, his hands were both loving, well into dawn and throughout the day— kneading, rolling out, shaping each astonishing moment of yeasty predictability in that windowless world lit by slightly swaying naked bulbs, where the shadows staggered, woozy with the aromatic warmth of the work. Then, the suit and drive, again. At our table, graced by a loaf that steamed when we sliced it, softened the butter and leavened the very air we’d breathe, he’d count us blessed.

The bread has become moldy and the dates blown down by the wind; the iron has slipped from the helve. The wool was to by dyed red but the dyer dyed it black. The dead woman has forgotten her comb and tube of eye-paint; the dead cobbler has forgotten his knife, the dead butcher his chopper, and the dead carpenter his adze. A goat can be driven off with a shout. But where is the man to shout? The bricks pile up, the laths are trimmed, and the beams are ready. Where is the builder? To be buried in a linen shroud or in a matting of reeds— but where are the dead of the Flood and where the dead of Nebuchadnezzar?