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I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd, Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer'd not with a caress—he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak'd up, And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died— Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge— The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

A daughter is not a passing cloud, but permanent, holding earth and sky together with her shadow. She sleeps upstairs like mystery in a story, blowing leaves down the stairs, then cold air, then warm. We who at sixty should know everything, know nothing. We become dull and disoriented by uncertain weather. We kneel, palms together, before this blossoming altar.

March 29, 2010 Every morning since the time changed I have woken to the dawn chorus And even before it sounded, I dreamed of it Loud, unbelievably loud, shameless, raucous And once I rose and twitched the curtains apart Expecting the birds to be pressing in fright Against the pane like passengers But the garden was empty and it was night Not a slither of light at the horizon Still the birds were bawling through the mists Terrible, invisible A million small evangelists How they sing: as if each had pecked up a smoldering coal Their throats singed and swollen with song In dissonance as befits the dark world Where only travelers and the sleepless belong

The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavor; And to-night I long for rest. Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

Bargain tarts, raspberry, goose, he said, don't write about that surgery, women who have hacked off write all parts and natures of women who lose food in the bottom parts of refrigerators, onions, scallions, sour tomatoes, tiny cocktail weenies lost in the airless dark write When you give over your breast to cancer, for God's sake don't write about it. Write about silliness, holding hands in sandboxes, small girls playing fudge- and-find-me-alley-tag at dusk, Rochester, state of pubescent, New Yorka roonie. ...day I learned to drive aimed car at horizon and floored it. Got there. God in color, no cable, firsthand. Going and coming back I thought I'd live. Not much for visions, still at sink soaking pinkies in sweetalmond suds, I heard Mom. Come on home, she said. Scared the witless bejeebies out of me. Next day I opted for surgery. Cut that mama off and saved my life. Big daddy surgeon said right on the mark, sweet honey. It was done. He's got a girlfriend works at his office, don't you know, she thinks he's licorice stick swinger. I caught them hugging in the mimeo room. Ain't nothing to it, he said, rolling his cup of a palm over the scar. Mmmmmm-mmmmm, this hillock is a sweet raisin, roll over baby, pour me out. Okeydokey. What came next in the woods, woolly dark trees don't give a fudge if what's hugging them hard dents in two places. I hang on for dear life. Filled pockets with seedpods, got bulbs I shoehorned into clay pots for life's sake. Nevertheless the disc shone hard, or didn't.

I was listening to a book on tape while driving and when the author said, “Those days I delighted in everything,” I pulled over and found a pencil and a parking ticket stub because surely there was a passage of life where I thought “These days I delight in everything,” right there in the present, because they almost all feel like that now, memory having markered only the outline while evaporating the inner anxieties of earlier times. Did I not disparage my body for years on end, for instance, although, in contrast that younger one now strikes me as near-Olympian? And the crushing preoccupations of that same younger self might seem magically diluted, as though a dictator in hindsight, had only been an overboard character — but not so. Where went the fear, dense as the sudden dark in the woods, of being alone, or the bruise of 3:30 pm in a silent apartment, when the disenfranchised live only with the sunlight through the blinds, just prey caught betwixt and between, and also heartbreak, and again, heartbreak. I didn’t have whatever that time of life then demanded — a book, a wedding band, a baby — but the present, like the lie of “fair and balanced” news reporting where creationists are granted air time with the scientists, the present might have me believe that “in those days I delighted in everything.” But to be ... fair and balanced ... I do trust the strict part of memory, the only archivist to have savored a passage of time and have preserved it with the translucent green hinges licked by stamp collectors, attaching it without hurting it, so I wanted the quote exactly, and go back to hunt and tag those months where I delighted in everything — then I couldn’t find the ticket stub. I rummaged through the recycling but no luck, and I couldn’t go back to find the passage on tape, and then I realized I had bought the book for my husband, so I started leafing through it, not wanting to start too far back, and not wanting my eyes to fall on a passage in the future, the one where she realizes that “Those days I delighted in everything,” but it was never to happen again, just the present, from here on in.

Raymond Radiguet Like seven birds sleeping on the plateau Overlooking the shipwreck of love, mystery Of the drunken visitors wandering off With your wife, men who talk with a bad accent, The condemned the abandoned, one day of silence, Two days of silence, dreams shattered and protected, The more the blossoms the more you suffer.

Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom; though they speak with more than just the season's tongue— the colours that they blaze from the dark loam all have something of the jealous tang of the dead about them. What do we know of their part in this, those secret brothers of the harrow, invigorators of the soil—oiling the dirt so liberally with their essence, their black marrow? But here's the question. Are the flower and fruit held out to us in love, or merely thrust up at us, their masters, like a fist? Or are they the lords, asleep amongst the roots, granting to us in their great largesse this hybrid thing—part brute force, part mute kiss?

Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air, a story sung by those who danced before the Lord in quiet. Who whirled and leapt. Giving voice to consonants that rise with no protection but each other’s ears. We are on our bellies in this silence, Lord. Let us wash our faces in the wind and forget the strict shapes of affection. Let the pregnant woman hold something of clay in her hand. For the secret of patience is his wife’s patience Let her man kneel on the roof, clearing his throat, he who loved roofs, tonight and tonight, making love to her and her forgetting, a man with a fast heartbeat, a woman dancing with a broom, uneven breath. Let them borrow the light from the blind. Let them kiss your forehead, approached from every angle. What is silence? Something of the sky in us. There will be evidence, there will be evidence. Let them speak of air and its necessities. Whatever they will open, will open.