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Start with the square heavy loaf steamed a whole day in a hot spring until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast grow dense as a black hole of bread. Let it age and dry a little, then soak the old loaf for a day in warm water flavored with raisins and lemon slices. Boil it until it is thick as molasses. Pour it in a flat white bowl. Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream to melt in its brown belly. This soup is alive as any animal, and the yeast and cream and rye will sing inside you after eating for a long time.

They pay me to lift the ball off the bat touch the slender hand and slip beneath the taut band I plant bulbs and mulch the mound I hone a group of black birds I do the simplest thing In unison with the trees people move as the sun moves He calls a seagull an eagle and I agree Across the pond they say I will I know this is a problem for the painter, etc. Tell me where to go if they ditch me mid-season tell me a word seeks its world Praise be to the upper lip of decision praise be to dumb clanking stems Everything is alive even you, floral loafer

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman's boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand, And the sound of a voice that is still! Break, break, break At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

‘Tis true, ‘tis day, what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise because ‘tis light? Did we lie down because ‘twas night? Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither, Should in despite of light keep us together. Light hath no tongue, but is all eye; If it could speak as well as spy, This were the worst that it could say, That being well I fain would stay, And that I loved my heart and honour so, That I would not from him, that had them, go. Must business thee from hence remove? Oh, that’s the worst disease of love, The poor, the foul, the false, love can Admit, but not the busied man. He which hath business, and makes love, doth do Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps my hand, A queer sardonic rat, As I pull the parapet’s poppy To stick behind my ear. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this English hand You will do the same to a German Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure To cross the sleeping green between. It seems you inwardly grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, The torn fields of France. What do you see in our eyes At the shrieking iron and flame Hurled through still heavens? What quaver—what heart aghast? Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins Drop, and are ever dropping; But mine in my ear is safe— Just a little white with the dust.

Then he stopped dead on the sidewalk astounded to overhear himself say quite distinctly I quit, in his own words — be glad you weren’t there. Pandemonium in the cerebral combs, unprecedented mass desertions, solar flare-ups. It said itself actually; the lips moved not, no thought was taken. With massive finality and apropos of absolutely nothing it came, a cruel blessing, the ultimate low note of an organ made of ice or a passing night train of black holes. He kept lying there — what else was he supposed to do? — with watch pressed to one ear, emitting a molecular hum. (Ever wonder how they fit a whole hive inside one of them?) Minute hand starting to disappear, such was its speed by now; on his face an expression of guarded rapture. No one could do a thing for him now. They’d stop, gaze down in disgust and concern, a moment before they hurried on or, without looking, adroitly moved around him, the way you would dog shit. Invariably in such cases there is a line that no one crosses. You know what I’m getting at. Mainly everyone just stands around and waits for the arrival of the ambulance; the mind simply stops, nothing, silence. Then the most silver, the tiniest sound of a fracture like that of an ice cube dropped in vodka can be heard around the world; people freeze at whatever they’re doing, and bow their minds, those persistent illusions in pain, or shame. But all is soon forgotten, the sunlight appears all at once like a great shadow and floats with the gas-like hush throughout the twelve spokes, the brilliant yellow darkness of the twelve candlelit hallways forever abandoned, forever emanating out from the one central hexagonal chamber so much larger than all the rest, in which the young queen lies dreaming, amazed, eyes open wide inside her lead-lined matchbox rocking bed, tits up dead, immovable sow, maggot in color.

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs, Because the shells were screeching overhead. I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread That Hull United would beat Halifax When Jimmy Stainthorpe played full-back instead of Billy Bradford.  Ginger raised his head And cursed, and took the bet; and dropt back dead. We ate our breakfast lying on our backs, Because the shells were screeching overhead.

A dinner party, coffee, tea, Sandwich, or supper, all may be In their way pleasant. But to me Not one of these deserves the praise That welcomer of new-born days, A breakfast, merits; ever giving Cheerful notice we are living Another day refreshed by sleep, When its festival we keep. Now although I would not slight Those kindly words we use ‘Good night’, Yet parting words are words of sorrow, And may not vie with sweet ‘Good Morrow’, With which again our friends we greet, When in the breakfast-room we meet, At the social table round, Listening to the lively sound Of those notes which never tire, Of urn, or kettle on the fire. Sleepy Robert never hears Or urn, or kettle; he appears When all have finished, one by one Dropping off, and breakfast done. Yet has he too his own pleasure, His breakfast hour’s his hour of leisure; And, left alone, he reads or muses, Or else in idle mood he uses To sit and watch the venturous fly, Where the sugar’s piled high, Clambering o’er the lumps so white, Rocky cliffs of sweet delight.

We’d pout. Our mother, brisking off, urged Darlings! — your vitamins & minerals dissolve inside with the milk & this-&-that into instructions rejiggering more vitamins, minerals, milk & this-&-that to fizz up & turn into actual you, or me, or anybody & etc. Experiment: — you might let drop capsules & milk into spit in one another’s cups. Watch, wait; think, add, stir. I’ll be right back. One day it quits. The whole business quits. Imagine that.

in memory, 1929-2004 We choose a cheap hotel because they’re serving drinks. We drink. I hear him tell a tale or two: he thinks that so-and-so’s a sleaze; and then there was the time that Milosz phoned, oh please. Another gin with lime? I want to say that once, I saw him dressed in leather, leaning on a fence inside a bar. Rather, walking to the N, I gush about his books; he gives his change to men who’ve lost their homes and looks: how like him, I’ve been told. Our day together done, I hug him in the cold. And then the train is gone.