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The wind shakes the chimes into the siding, and the dog shakes too though he doesn’t wake you as I carry you to the bedroom. Small mouth sipping breath, you are fish-strange, bejeweled in the dimness of the microwave’s nightlight. As I turn my back to the bulb I make your form in my arms a dark weight but you are no anchor. Together we are sloops trailing a tiny wake in the carpet. In the dark it’s hard to navigate the furniture so I count distance—five paces from the tile to the sofa. From the sofa, twelve to the hall. I’m subtracting my steps to see what’s left. The things that burden me, like our lame dog’s shattered nail, blood on the carpet from his paces to the food dish, our drafty house, all are outpaced. There are no barriers, and I step over the hound’s dozing form as a quick gust cuts dead branches from the pine and the drifts lock our cars in. But I’m still counting— the none-stars in the winter sky, each hazily wrapped and strobing. The far bell over the deep waters of your sleep. Two steps to the corner where there are no animals nor animal danger. Two to the bed where behind us the shadow of the dog could be distant hills, where the clouds disassemble, where your breaths pull the warmth of the room in and where my face, my eyes are the glint of ore from a country far away and known only in a language, light as the syllables of exhalation.

Today, no matter if it rains, It’s time to follow the path into the forest. The same people will be walking the same dogs, Or if not the same dogs, dogs that behave in similar fashions, Some barking, some standing aloof. The owners carry plastic bags. But this is the forest, they complain, we must do as we like. We must let the dogs run free, We must follow their example, The way we did when we were young. Back then we slept, watched TV — We were the dogs. By the time the screen door slammed, we were gone. Nobody really talks like that in the forest. They’re proud of their dogs, Proud especially of the ones who never bark. They’re upset about the Norway maple, it’s everywhere, Crowding out the hickories and oaks. Did you know it takes a million seeds to make one tree? Your chances of surviving in the forest, Of replicating yourself, are slim. Today, the smaller dogs are wearing raincoats, The bigger ones are stiffing it out. They’re tense, preoccupied, Running in circles, Getting tangled in the leash— It’s hard remaining human in the forest. To move the limbs of the body, To speak intelligible words, These things promise change.

Little Poems in Prose I. The Exodus. (August 3, 1492.) 1. The Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and bleached highroads, through rock-split ravines and castellated, cathedral-shadowed towns. 2. The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory-pale, well-nigh swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised and bleeding feet. “Mother, shall we soon be there?” 3. The youth with Christ-like countenance speaks comfortably to father and brother, to maiden and wife. In his breast, his own heart is broken. 4. The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack-horses laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst with fever. 5. The panting mules are urged forward with spur and goad; stuffed are the heavy saddlebags with the wreckage of ruined homes. 6. Hark to the tinkling silver bells that adorn the tenderly-carried silken scrolls. 7. In the fierce noon-glare a lad bears a kindled lamp; behind its network of bronze the airs of heaven breathe not upon its faint purple star. 8. Noble and abject, learned and simple, illustrious and obscure, plod side by side, all brothers now, all merged in one routed army of misfortune. 9. Woe to the straggler who falls by the wayside! no friend shall close his eyes. 10. They leave behind, the grape, the olive, and the fig; the vines they planted, the corn they sowed, the garden-cities of Andalusia and Aragon, Estremadura and La Mancha, of Granada and Castile; the altar, the hearth, and the grave of their fathers. 11. The townsman spits at their garments, the shepherd quits his flock, the peasant his plow, to pelt with curses and stones; the villager sets on their trail his yelping cur. 12. Oh the weary march, oh the uptorn roots of home, oh the blankness of the receding goal! 13. Listen to their lamentation: They that ate dainty food are desolate in the streets; they that were reared in scarlet embrace dunghills. They flee away and wander about. Men say among the nations, they shall no more sojourn there; our end is near, our days are full, our doom is come. 14. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and the East refuseth to receive. 15. O bird of the air, whisper to the despairing exiles, that to-day, to-day, from the many-masted, gayly-bannered port of Palos, sails the world-unveiling Genoese, to unlock the golden gates of sunset and bequeath a Continent to Freedom! II. Treasures. 1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison. 2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze. 3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold. 4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth; long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast thou slept in the rayless house of darkness. 5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law. III. The Sower. 1. Over a boundless plain went a man, carrying seed. 2. His face was blackened by sun and rugged from tempest, scarred and distorted by pain. Naked to the loins, his back was ridged with furrows, his breast was plowed with stripes. 3. From his hand dropped the fecund seed. 4. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil blade, a sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree. Its arms touched the ends of the horizon, the heavens were darkened with its shadow. 5. It bare blossoms of gold and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage, and a serpent was coiled about its stem. 6. Under its branches a divinely beautiful man, crowned with thorns, was nailed to a cross. 7. And the tree put forth treacherous boughs to strangle the Sower; his flesh was bruised and torn, but cunningly he disentangled the murderous knot and passed to the eastward. 8. Again there dropped from his hand the fecund seed. 9. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree. Crescent shaped like little emerald moons were the leaves; it bare blossoms of silver and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foilage and a serpent was coiled about its stem. 10. Under its branches a turbaned mighty-limbed Prophet brandished a drawn sword. 11. And behold, this tree likewise puts forth perfidious arms to strangle the Sower; but cunningly he disentangles the murderous knot and passes on. 12. Lo, his hands are not empty of grain, the strength of his arm is not spent. 13. What germ hast thou saved for the future, O miraculous Husbandman? Tell me, thou Planter of Christhood and Islam; tell me, thou seed-bearing Israel! IV. The Test. 1. Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel. 2. I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by the sword, burned at the stake, tossed into the seas. 3. And always the patient, resolute, martyr face arose in silent rebuke and defiance. 4. A Prophet with four eyes; wide gazed the orbs of the spirit above the sleeping eyelids of the senses. 5. A Poet, who plucked from his bosom the quivering heart and fashioned it into a lyre. 6. A placid-browed Sage, uplifted from earth in celestial meditation. 7. These I saw, with princes and people in their train; the monumental dead and the standard-bearers of the future. 8. And suddenly I heard a burst of mocking laughter, and turning, I beheld the shuffling gait, the ignominious features, the sordid mask of the son of the Ghetto. V. Currents. 1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable tides, oversweep our continent. 2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of Europe, 3. From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief and Ekaterinoslav, 4. Hark to the cry of the exiles of Babylon, the voice of Rachel mourning for her children, of Israel lamenting for Zion. 5. And lo, like a turbid stream, the long-pent flood bursts the dykes of oppression and rushes hitherward. 6. Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes them. 7. The herdsman of Canaan and the seed of Jerusalem’s royal shepherds renew their youth amid the pastoral plains of Texas and the golden valleys of the Sierras. VI. The Prophet. 1. Moses ben Maimon lifting his perpetual lamp over the path of the perplexed; 2. Hallevi, the honey-tongued poet, wakening amid the silent ruins of Zion the sleeping lyre of David; 3. Moses, the wise son of Mendel, who made the Ghetto illustrious; 4. Abarbanel, the counselor of kings; Aicharisi, the exquisite singer; Ibn Ezra, the perfect old man; Gabirol, the tragic seer; 5. Heine, the enchanted magician, the heart-broken jester; 6.Yea, and the century-crowned patriarch whose bounty engirdles the globe;— 7. These need no wreath and no trumpet; like perennial asphodel blossoms, their fame, their glory resounds like the brazen-throated cornet. 8. But thou—hast thou faith in the fortune of Israel? Wouldst thou lighten the anguish of Jacob? 9. Then shalt thou take the hand of yonder caftaned wretch with flowing curls and gold-pierced ears; 10. Who crawls blinking forth from the loathsome recesses of the Jewry; 11. Nerveless his fingers, puny his frame; haunted by the bat-like phantoms of superstition is his brain. 12. Thou shalt say to the bigot, “My Brother,” and to the creature of darkness, “My Friend.” 13 . And thy heart shall spend itself in fountains of love upon the ignorant, the coarse, and the abject. 14. Then in the obscurity thou shalt hear a rush of wings, thine eyes shall be bitten with pungent smoke. 15. And close against thy quivering lips shall be pressed the live coal wherewith the Seraphim brand the Prophets. VII. Chrysalis. 1. Long, long has the Orient Jew spun around his helplessness the cunningly enmeshed web of Talmud and Kabbala. 2. Imprisoned in dark corners of misery and oppression, closely he drew about him the dust-gray filaments, soft as silk and stubborn as steel, until he lay death-stiffened in mummied seclusion. 3. And the world has named him an ugly worm, shunning the blessed daylight. 4. But when the emancipating springtide breathes wholesome, quickening airs, when the Sun of Love shines out with cordial fires, lo, the Soul of Israel bursts her cobweb sheath, and flies forth attired in the winged beauty of immortality.

The animal of winter is dying, its white body everywhere in collapse and stabbed at by straws of   light, a leaving to believe in as the air slowly fills with darkness and water drains from the tub where my daughter, watching it lower around her, feeling it go, says about the only thing she can as if it were a long- kept breath going with her blessing of dribble and fleck. Down it swirls a living drill vanishing toward a land where tomorrow already fixes its bright eye on a man muttering his way into a crowd, saying about the only thing he can before his body goes boom. And tomorrow, I will count more dark shapes tumbling from the sky, birds returning to scarcity, offering in their seesawing songs a kind of   liquidity.

I put my hand Into the dream That falls upon The air. It Touches me a little, But I don’t complain. I’m almost asleep When I get there. Where Byron Lost the scent of his Life, over there, Where the dreams are. It’s always Hot, like The eyes of the Dream. Sometimes The dream is On the dunes Watching the molten Ocean burn the sun. The dream scours the Sand in your fish Tank for the plastic Mermaid who is gaining weight. Nevertheless, We go to the edge To watch the dream And the repetition being Hurled ashore like A drop of blue, You wrote in a poem, In a language You alone Understand In the dream.

The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins. Before me floats an image, man or shade, Shade more than man, more image than a shade; For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth May unwind the winding path; A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouths may summon; I hail the superhuman; I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, More miracle than bird or handiwork, Planted on the starlit golden bough, Can like the cocks of Hades crow, Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory of changeless metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood. At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit, Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave, Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood, Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, The golden smithies of the Emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those images that yet Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

metaphor waits at the foot of his name on thursday he’ll cancel experience metaphor waits for him to shovel the snow on thursday he’ll crush experience

Honor is due to those who are keeping watch, Sentinels guarding their own Thermopylae; Never distracted from what is right to do, And right to be; in all things virtuous, But never so hardened by virtue as not to be Compassionate, available to pity; Generous if they’re rich, but generous too, Doing whatever they can, if they are poor; Always true to the truth, no matter what, But never scornful of those who have to lie. Even more honor is due when, keeping watch, They see that the time will come when Ephialtes Will tell the secret to the Medes and they Will know the way to get in through the goat-path.

Chorus Ca' the yowes to the knowes, Ca' them where the heather grows Ca' them where the burnie rows, My bonie dearie. Hark! the mavis' evening sang Sounding Cluden's woods amang, Then a-fauldin let us gang, My bonie dearie. We'll gae down by Cluden side, Thro' the hazels spreading wide, O'er the waves that sweetly glide To the moon sae clearly. Yonder Cluden's silent towers, Where at moonshine midnight hours, O'er the dewy-bending flowers, Fairies dance sae cheery. Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear; Thou 'rt to love and Heaven sae dear, Nocht of ill may come thee near, My bonie dearie. Fair and lovely as thou art, Thou hast stown my very heart; I can die—but canna part, My bonie dearie.

That’s right, said the cab driver, Turning the corner to the Round-a-bout way, Those stupid, fuckin’ beggars, You know the guys who Walk up to my cab With their hands extended And their little cups? You know their problem? You know what’s wrong with them? They ain’t got no brains. I mean, they don’t know nothin’ ’cause if they had brains They’d think of a way To find a job. You know what one of ’em told me once? He said what he did, Begging He said it was work. Begging Was work. And I told him Straight to his face: That ain’t work. You think that’s work? Let me tell you what work is: Work is something that you do That’s of value To someone else. Now you take me. It takes brains to do What I do. You know what I think? I think they ought to send All these beggars over To some other country, Any country, It don’t matter which, For 3, 4, years, Let them wander around Some other country, See how they like that. We ought to make a National program Sending them off To wander about Some other country For a few years, Let ’em beg over there, See how far it gets them. I mean, look at that guy You know, who was big In the sixties, That drug guy, Timothy Leary? Yeah, he went underground, Lived overseas. You know what? A few years abroad And he was ready to Come back On any terms. He didn’t care if They arrested him. He said The U.S. is better Than any country In the world. Send them over there For a few years. They’d be just like him. This is the greatest country In the whole world. Timothy Leary Was damn happy To get back here, And he’s doing fine. Look at me. I used to be like that. I used to live underground. I came back. I think all those beggars got a mental block. I think you should do something. I mean, you ought to like what you do, But you should do something. Something of use To the community. All those people, Those bums, Those scam artists, Those hustlers, Those drug addicts, Those welfare cheats, Those sponges. Other than that I don’t hold nothin’ Against no one. Hey, I picked you up.