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According to Lin Yutang, both Po Chuyi and Su Tungpo "desperately admired" Tao Yuanming, a poet of nature who wrote a single love poem, a poem thought by Chinese dilettantes to be the one "blemish in a white jade." Can a poet be faulted for calling a woman carelessly perfect in beauty ? He chose to long for her by envying the candle that glowed upon her beautiful face, the shadow that followed in her every move. Yet the nature poet Tao Yuanming, at home with the sudden turning of seasons, now feared the shadow in darkness, a discarded fan that once stirred her hair, feared the candle at dawn. At last believed that for beauty he had lived in vain.

Trees in the old days used to stand And shape a shady lane Where lovers wandered hand in hand Who came from Carentan. This was the shining green canal Where we came two by two Walking at combat-interval. Such trees we never knew. The day was early June, the ground Was soft and bright with dew. Far away the guns did sound, But here the sky was blue. The sky was blue, but there a smoke Hung still above the sea Where the ships together spoke To towns we could not see. Could you have seen us through a glass You would have said a walk Of farmers out to turn the grass, Each with his own hay-fork. The watchers in their leopard suits Waited till it was time, And aimed between the belt and boot And let the barrel climb. I must lie down at once, there is A hammer at my knee. And call it death or cowardice, Don’t count again on me. Everything’s all right, Mother, Everyone gets the same At one time or another. It’s all in the game. I never strolled, nor ever shall, Down such a leafy lane. I never drank in a canal, Nor ever shall again. There is a whistling in the leaves And it is not the wind, The twigs are falling from the knives That cut men to the ground. Tell me, Master-Sergeant, The way to turn and shoot. But the Sergeant’s silent That taught me how to do it. O Captain, show us quickly Our place upon the map. But the Captain’s sickly And taking a long nap. Lieutenant, what’s my duty, My place in the platoon? He too’s a sleeping beauty, Charmed by that strange tune. Carentan O Carentan Before we met with you We never yet had lost a man Or known what death could do.

The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, And I was tarred and feathered, For publishing this on the day the Anarchists were hanged in Chicago: "I saw a beautiful woman with bandaged eyes Standing on the steps of a marble temple. Great multitudes passed in front of her, Lifting their faces to her imploringly. In her left hand she held a sword. She was brandishing the sword, Sometimes striking a child, again a laborer, Again a slinking woman, again a lunatic. In her right hand she held a scale; Into the scale pieces of gold were tossed By those who dodged the strokes of the sword. A man in a black gown read from a manuscript: 'She is no respecter of persons.' Then a youth wearing a red cap Leaped to her side and snatched away the bandage. And lo, the lashes had been eaten away From the oozy eye-lids; The eye-balls were seared with a milky mucus; The madness of a dying soul Was written on her face i But the multitude saw why she wore the bandage."

My first day leading the prison writing workshop: Carlos complimented my choosing the chair nearest the door. I read a poem by Whitman that once sent me hitchhiking and Carlos stood up, asked to read a section from his four hundred-page work-in-progress, a poem that turns on his first finding Neruda's "One Year Walk"; he said it lit up the night like a perfect crime, so I left everything — I had no choice—walked three thousand miles to the Pacific . From memory he recited a passage in which his father left the family a small fortune, all counterfeit: though I doubted the facts, I can still see that worn briefcase, almost-perfect hundreds stacked neatly in shrink-wrapped packs. I was young, it took me two weeks to accept that I could teach this lifer nothing. World of concrete floors and everlasting light: he was grateful to God who gave him a blazing mind not granted to anyone living or dead , and wouldn't have changed a word anyway.

1. without that, the river which was, a substrata is movement now. mermaid left behind flopping in the pipes. her sludge is the sewer where once they fished to watch the night sky blacken. that one, long lingering, now languishes in a cavernous underground source, fountain for none. music of exhaust and darkening horizons, her hair begins to thin, nails soften, while she waits, a siren of light slow to diminish, wasting rescue. dogs at night are frequent. the scales that once cleaved to her flesh, her skin house shelter, now a day-glow phosphorescence, luminous filth, cleavage, radiating and filtered through her. boils begin to grow, round lumps spurting evanescence, a rainbow of industry, inviting those who come to visit to enjoy her paints, corporeal, images of what might be, a river now sewer then tomb, sanctions while poking her eyes out. no sensible heat. 2. images are wanting. she studies them. let them bury themselves in: no comment no comment. a partial shutter moves through the crowd taking us up along its crest. pubises sway. incarnate and incorporated publicly. swaying us. subjects of. the sap in the oak tree the bugs in the bookbinding. for she renders and has left behind the bark. its carnality upon which I turn. hard by and solitary. the other pole. 3. she means to say or stubbornness as a means of resistance speaking about us and for us dread and ailments a celebrated day in liberating explosions of losses disparities and distances dispersed in errors mistaken detours mismade calculations faulty respirations. counter to the stream and in plumes. the pressure transgressed in hands. nor was there another road. trying to gather what is gone. first by pacing. then on her hands and knees with the measuring tape. she’s a period piece asking if. seeking the response she is the question. 4. she means to say we live among a crowded scene. overcrowding faces and malice. a crack in time painted on garden paths. inclined to our desire. we ooze we can flourish there. forward an elephant eleven o’clock rook one o’clock apple and three o’clock lightning perpendicular to spoon soiled underneath apple in line with lightning in line with two cent piece face down. all circling hunted and hunting. elephant trying to leave the scene heading out east spoon facing west constellating failure of identity with apple and rook. 5. meaning to say. given that. the uncertainty. perhaps. surely. perhaps. figures in. the shape. perhaps. calls. subtract. total. a certainty. the space between. shaped by want. by need. fear of threats. the lure of repetition. her feet admired. their figures. the fear of repetition. start at the end. work back to shape. figure that. days wait. the response. slowness as position. a gap to walk into. opposition. given an entrance. she is on your side. whirlpools of repetition. opening traps. a shape appears. groups itself. more figures. a shape in the doorway. time for gets smaller. tilts inwards. the envelope unshared. first. given that. a set of shapes plan to meet. she is faint. clouds to the west. 6. white metal teeth. describe her lips. how they reveal and encircle them. encircling me. place them in some setting. a long walk. the kitchen at night. hounding toward an untimely end. that which spawns life. one foot in front of the next. spawning more. beating out the attachments. strumming along. not refreshing that. productive and not taking advice. recognizable car engine up the road. another can grow again there. 7. unjoined. supporting that. permeated and touched. moved by injury. joining not singular. this state. that stare. meaning the look alikes and she is eying those that be. taken to the extreme. accepting even that. orchestrate a sighing. a fourth. audible sounds of presence. calculating the ooze of difference. a quaver in the voice, it’s the ask if. 8. I adopt a hostile attitude towards it. towards want. forced into the background. escaped from the cage prowls about in your life. a ghost of dead business unfinished and naked cash payments between afterglow. intolerable shadow invites back into the fracture. watching the tree grow naked. going down to the port start from the shore of calculations and yawning. it is voracious. its wanting to be included wanting to grow fast. is asunder where the first was rooted out. sifting through the outrages of lightning and blood. 9. refresh against the sightlines. in its sedimentation along the edge of the mountains. planes overhead. the love of trees indigent and muscular. exploratory chance to disappear bone by bone rancid. finally : slowly : she : exuberant and revolting forcing immobility. along the edges of the mountains replenishing asking Agnes asking Edith. grinding into their own emergence. an unlikely anger such unlikeness. sharp calmness shallow dehydration and a decomposition weary and threadbare. admit nothing turn by turn admitting a hand. expresses weariness. its evanescence its asking to be unlikely bone by bone. 10. she tells more than she knows. a knot of suffocation. strangling itself. gestures your gait and resolutions. a recipe in permanent access in diversions. the flower dies at the end. a short stifled giggle. I had gone ‘too far’ asking toe to toe. adoring and afar we attend. before talking. the horizon folding in on us. to give in advance of conductivity as a dispatch. regardless of protection she means to say. indeed. 11. indeed. I can’t declare them for what they are. the approach goes like this. the dogs bark across the street. when and how and where. despairing answers. here it is finally. the days passing as an argument indeed indeed terrestrial. carnal excavating relentlessly. inaudible slow. howling recalcitrance behind the music. beneath the ground.

The mask that burns like a violin, the mask that sings only dead languages, that loves the destruction of being put on. The mask that sighs like a woman even though a woman wears it. The mask beaded with freshwater pearls, with seeds. The plumed mask, the mask with a sutured mouth, a moonface, with a healed gash that means harvest. A glower that hides wanting. A grotesque pucker. Here’s a beaked mask, a braided mask, here’s a mask without eyes, a mask that looks like a mask but isn’t—please don’t try to unribbon it. The mask that snows coins, the mask full of wasps. Lace mask to net escaping thoughts. Pass me the rouged mask, the one made of sheet music. Or the jackal mask, the hide-bound mask that renders lovers identical with night.

Jets shake the air and snow breaks off a tree branch in little puffs. One cardinal. Cars moving slowly downhill on the ice. It is always someone’s last day. Dearest Bird, she read from the card she’d found unattached to the flowers, Happy Day To Our Sweetest Hart. Love Monster And Beef Dad. Their secret language. Manischewitz, she calls me for the sweetness. Manitoba, for the expanse. Deer rest in snow, charcoal muzzle to charcoal hoof, heads slung over their shoulders like swans. One is in REM. Look at it dreaming, she said. Fern buttons unwheel in a dark place behind the snow, a contrast she loves in me. The sledding hill is closed, the days like an unused billboard, but sunsets have been fantastic, jewel-toned as the flowers unattached to the card, or hot like the cardinal who pins the whole picture up with your eye. Meanwhile, her tree is an iron room with the moon inside. Its branches have a mental disorder so sunsets keep dodging them. I am the color of that tree she loves and nearly as still. And my blood, which is not in this picture, will soon cool, sunset winking out in my eyes and her eyes welling in a language that once fell and rose in drifts then melted, starry, she said, starry, into my warm coat.

Carole Robertston, Who loved books, earned straight A's, And took dance lessons every Saturday. Who joined the Girl Scouts and science club And played clarinet in the high school band. A member of Jack and Jill of America. Carole, who thought she might want To teach history someday Or at least make her mark on it.

Nonentity’s birthplace: a front yard sweeps its dirt clean. Devil hopped up the oak tree, devil-take-the-profit seized a jay in the twigs by the feet, wings buffeting this child’s cheeks to rhyme. Leaf of gift box tissue folded over her pocket comb. Hind pocket kazoo. Won’t somebody please start something other & oddball soon, narrow her down out of folly & trivia to destiny? But Whynot the tortie cat flopped an irregular sunny patch, wriggles & rolls & revives the blissy fits of ignorance. Decades crunch as minor upcountry thunder. My nod to Mastermind’s robot rabbit, said to dwell in his top hat, who tips me a silk evening. Gloaming again & never far from home. Listen you hoots: alas for me, for my love with the gallant and grifter soul has tucked into just the crevice he feared. Fear told & tells him the truth, so he trusts it. Listen you hollers, whatever you had in mind for me.

Smoketrees line the roadside, still-bare beech and poplar bouqueted with redbud and something rusty I can't name, March's odd autumnals — One-church towns I'm glad not to be from, split-log strip mall with a porch where Claire's beauty shop shares a sign with "Antigues," where you study grace in magazines, and when dad dies you rename the family diner New York New York. Love is a means of travel, so you dye the linens pink and swan-fold napkins, holding peony in your mouth. Sundays drive out to watch the ferry drag its lace. Coastward, Easter-colored clapboard, the last generation's shanties hovering on narrow stilts above the velour drift of tide plain (mink from a distance, muskrat up close), a drowsy instrumental music, flooded at dusk. Beside the bridge, smooth brow of pewter. Island of saplings blackened like a framed-up house.