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They brought it. It was brought from the field, the last sheaf, the last bundle the latest and most final armful. Up up over the head, hold it, hold it high it held the gazer’s gaze, it held hope, did hold it. Through the stubble of September, on shoulders aloft, hardly anything, it weighed, like a sparrow, it was said, something winged, hollow, though pulsing, freed from the field where it flailed in wind, where it waited, wanted to be found and bound with cord. It had limbs, it had legs. And hands. It had fingers. Fingers and a face peering from the stalks, shuttered in the grain, closed, though just a kernel a shut corm. They brought him and autumn rushed in, tossed its cape of starlings, tattered the frost-spackled field.

and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion the wept face of desire, a kind of   savage caring that reseeds itself and grows in clusters oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white as god’s own ribs what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches yearning for that vernal beau.   for don’t birds covet the seeds of the honey locust and doesn’t the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats foraged in the meadow kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me by the nape guess I figured to be done with desire, if   I could write it out dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of   twigs and brush what was his name? I’d ask myself, that guy with the sideburns and charming smile the one I hoped that, as from a sip of   hemlock, I’d expire with him on my tongue silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided preacher as if   banishing love is a fix.   as if the stars go out when we shut our sleepy eyes For Haines Eason

What’ll it be? Roast beef on rye, with tomato and mayo. Whaddaya want on it? A swipe of mayo. Pepper but no salt. You got it. Roast beef on rye. You want lettuce on that? No. Just tomato and mayo. Tomato and mayo. You got it. …Salt and pepper? No salt, just a little pepper. You got it. No salt. You want tomato. Yes. Tomato. No lettuce. No lettuce. You got it. …No salt, right? Right. No salt. You got it. Pickle? No, no pickle. Just tomato and mayo. And pepper. Pepper. Yes, a little pepper. Right. A little pepper. No pickle. Right. No pickle. You got it. Next! Roast beef on whole wheat, please, With lettuce, mayonnaise and a center slice Of beefsteak tomato. The lettuce splayed, if you will, In a Beaux Arts derivative of classical acanthus, And the roast beef, thinly sliced, folded In a multi-foil arrangement That eschews Bragdonian pretensions Or any idea of divine geometric projection For that matter, but simply provides A setting for the tomato To form a medallion with a dab Of mayonnaise as a fleuron. And—as eclectic as this may sound— If the mayonnaise can also be applied Along the crust in a Vitruvian scroll And as a festoon below the medallion, That would be swell. You mean like in the Cathedral St. Pierre in Geneva? Yes, but the swag more like the one below the rosette At the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. You got it. Next!

The wind may blow the snow about, For all I care, says Jack, And I don’t mind how cold it grows, For then the ice won’t crack. Old folks may shiver all day long, But I shall never freeze; What cares a jolly boy like me For winter days like these? Far down the long snow-covered hills It is such fun to coast, So clear the road! the fastest sled There is in school I boast. The paint is pretty well worn off, But then I take the lead; A dandy sled’s a loiterer, And I go in for speed. When I go home at supper-time, Ki! but my cheeks are red! They burn and sting like anything; I’m cross until I’m fed. You ought to see the biscuit go, I am so hungry then; And old Aunt Polly says that boys Eat twice as much as men. There’s always something I can do To pass the time away; The dark comes quick in winter-time— A short and stormy day And when I give my mind to it, It’s just as father says, I almost do a man’s work now, And help him many ways. I shall be glad when I grow up And get all through with school, I’ll show them by-and-by that I Was not meant for a fool. I’ll take the crops off this old farm, I’ll do the best I can. A jolly boy like me won’t be A dolt when he’s a man. I like to hear the old horse neigh Just as I come in sight, The oxen poke me with their horns To get their hay at night. Somehow the creatures seem like friends, And like to see me come. Some fellows talk about New York, But I shall stay at home.

A fall over rock, Metal answering to water, Is the seal of this spot; A land trodden by music And the tune forgot. Of a region savage, The territory that was broken, Silver gushed free; And earth holy, earth meek shall receive it In humility. This, not dwelt in, this haunted, The country of the proud, Is curdling to stone, And careless of the feet of the waters As they glance from it down.

tend their yard every weekend, when they paint or straighten the purple fencepickets canting each other at the edge of their lot, hammering them down into soil to stand. How long will they stay put? My neighbors mend their gate, hinges rusted to blood-colored dust, then weave gold party-lights with orange lobster-nets & blue buoys along the planks. So much to see & not see again, each chore undone before they know it. I love how faithfully they work their garden all year, scumbling dried eelgrass in fall, raking away mulch in spring. Today the older one, Pat, plants weeds ripped from a cranberry-bog. Sassafras & pickerel, black locust & meadowsweet, wild sarsaparilla, checkerberry, starflower. Will they take root here? Meanwhile Chris waters seeds sown months ago. Furrows of kale, snap-bean, scallion break the surface, greedy for life. Muskrose & lilac cast their last shadows. Is it seeing or sun that makes them flicker, as if they’ve vanished? They shake like a letter in someone’s hand. Here come the guys from Whorfs (“Whores”) Court, walking their dog —also in drag—to the dunes. I miss seeing Disorient Express (a.k.a. Cheng, out of drag) walk by, in tulle & sequins the exact shade of bok choi. He must have endured things no one can name, to name only KS, pneumocystis, aplastic anemia. I remember he walked off his gurney when the ambulance came, then broke his nurse’s fingers in the hospital when he tried to change his IV line, wanting to live without meds. Zorivax, Ativan, leucovorin? I don't know. Pat & Chris pack down the loose dirt. I’ll never know what threads hold our lives together. They kiss, then fall on the grass. I should look away but don’t.

(for Saul Chessler, 1953-1974) I walked from my house down Coolidge Street last night And air, beginning movement in the trees, Shook down a hushing from the branches. On either side of me the houses Like solid shadow, blocks of silence In the violet light, so dim without dimming. And I saw you, Saul, my old friend, waiting For me at the corner where our two streets met. I wanted to ask you what it was like to die But you said first, as if you didn’t want to tell me, ‘The doctors made me better. We can run again.’ You ran behind me (the way you always did), Your slow strides lunging; though they never could keep up This time they stayed right there at my heels. Turning, I saw one pocket inside out Clapping on your coat front like a white hand. Your breath quickened, scrawled in the chilling air Like mine, and vanishing. We ran on a field of snow. Our footsteps pattered the smooth crust, Each one feeling like it might break through. Around us the pure white kindled under violet. And we returned by train. Sitting next to you, Staring through the window, I saw your body Lying like a dark slash in the snow, Your arms flung up, your legs crossed, Even as I heard you next to me Still struggling to catch your breath. You were just Pretending to be alive—remembering to breathe. Lumbering under living weight, saying you were cured, Your flushed cheeks—all just to put me at my ease, Afraid that your death might embarrass me, even then Saul, you were more a friend to me than you were dead. But in my mind the question was still circling: What is it like to die? But how could I catch you In a lie which you intended as a kindness? Beside you on the train, hurtling back Into the strange familiarity of Coolidge Street, Remaining silent, I returned the courtesy.

1. “Naked woman surrounded by police”: that’s one way to start the poem. But would she mean anything devoid of her context, in this case a lushly late-August deciduous forest, some maple, mostly oak? She carries no prop—for example, no bike chain, which the cops could be sawing from the tree trunk that she’s wedded to her body. But let’s start with her pure, and untranslated, as the famous cartoon of the door is a mystery until we post the word LADIES at a point that would be four feet up from the ground if this door were not drawn two inches tall—it’s us, you see, who make believe it corresponds to a “true-life” human door. Does it help if I say the naked woman is “really” my true- life friend, she of the tangled dago surname we don’t need to get into here? And if I say next that she has been swimming—in Lake Tiorati— 2. you can see how straightaway the tangling subdivides into (a) where the hell is Lake Tiorati? and (b) why naked?—to the last let me answer that it’s 1978 and she is twenty; at college she’s been reading Simone de Beauvoir and learning words like patriarchy and oppression. And these have been Mixmastered into her thinking even about swimsuits—i.e., that not to wear one is to rip the sign off the door and stomp it underfoot. When she lies on a rock the last thing she expects is the tingling she feels now against her wrist, from a guy peeing brazenly at her perimeter. This is an impasse whose bud she thought she had nipped by aggravating her muscles into interlaced mounds so her body resembles a relief map of the Appalachians. In whose northernmost range this story unfolds & hence the much-delayed answer to item (a), above. 3. “Naked woman dadadadada police”: not a story but words at the end of a chain whose first link is her realizing that the Puerto Rican kids across the lake splashing and whooping are not having fun— though this is the sign that she’d stuck on their door. No, there’s another word for the kid slapping his palms on the water: Drowning. Even the urinater abruptly stops his stream and stumbles back from her, ashamed. And because she’s the one with the lifeguard build and because all the guys are much too drunk, without even thinking she finds herself paddling toward the spot these kids are now screaming Julio! at, where she draws a mental X upon the water. Of course, it is a fantasy, the correspondence that would make a drawing equal life, and so you understand how amazing it is, when she dives to the bottom and her hand happens on the child. 4. Perhaps what she expected was for the men on shore to pay her no mind, as in Manet’s Déjeuner . . . : the naked woman sits among them, yet she is a ghost. But the kids keep yelling Julio! even after she’s hauled the wet one out, the one she points to:Julio okay. No, they shriek, Julio otro! words she knows just enough Spanish to know mean there’s another Julio in the lake. Whom she cannot save despite her next round of diving, which lasts until the cops come hiking down the trail in their cop shoes. Then she comes ashore and stands shivering among them, telling the story calmly enough until she ends it with: for Christ’s sake can’t anyone give her a T-shirt? They’re staring as if somehow she’s what’s to blame, seeing a naked woman, not the miracle. Which is, of course, the living boy, that with these words —Julio otro!— we manage to make sense to anyone at all.

I   Or Your Woman The night was a bad one. I only saw one other person out: A big black man on muleback Riding along the levee, marking the water. There was a lantern in his hand And what you could call a grim smile on the lips. I shifted down gears, Rolled down the window, turned the radio low. And said, “Say there, man, how goes it?” But he couldn’t hear me for the rain And the song on his transistor radio. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s raining, Raining to beat hell.” Said I, “Do you think it’s going to quit?” “Friend, I couldn’t tell you.” When big water will, you call everyman friend . . . We said our goodnights, Went on, by mule and flatbed truck, wearing black Rubber, cold to the bone, Like divers from different ships meeting below. All you can do is nod, some of the times. At least, we spoke, knowing that living Anywhere near the river You speak when you can; the only thing you try To hold is your liquor, And we had none, that bad night on the levee. Always down the road, I looked up In the mirror.  And I’m sure he’d a done the same. II   Midnight I almost slid off, once Imagining this cloud was a pall And the moon was a body. I don’t know who put coins over her eyes. When I got to Rampion’s Ferry, I thought I was the only one there. I mean it was quiet, Except for the current, the cables, and the rain. I got a piece of rope Out of the back of my truck, and wound it Around the generator Engine; it kicked right off the first pull. The yellow bug lights came on, And I saw a body move under a purple blanket. He cussed me out For waking him up, pulling his old self up. There was some kind of fish In the weave of his poncho; other figures Of snakes and birds, too. I didn’t mean to wake the awnry fellow up, I wonder if I did. A strange odor came from underneath him When he dragged out his towsack. It didn’t smell of something burning, but of Something that was singed. Like the rain, it didn’t let up. “Are we going crosst it, or not,” He told me in a voice, half-blooded song. III   Some Past Twelve Someone with a light Rode up before I could see what all He was pulling from the burlap: Blue calling chalk you find in pool halls, ivory Tusks, a stringer with rotten heads The good book and another I couldn’t pronounce— Just as worn, And one of those paperweight crystals that snows. He had strummed the mandolin twice, A couple of sounds blue as a fox in trouble In a snowdrift on a ridge, like weeds Burning underwater, a few licks of silent fire. When I recognized the lookout The ferry wasn’t more than a few feet off the bank, So the mule made it aboard, easy; Its hooves on the planks like a mad, rough carpenter Nailing driftwood together. Oh, we made it across.  We didn’t exactly Hit the dock on the head, But we floated on down to Vahalia’s Landing. We had a good time. The foreigner played the mandolin, the river Reached its crest, And the man on the mule and I drank way into the morning. They heard us, the ones on land. “We’re a floating whorehouse, without noun women.” And in the dead of night, Rain and all, we motioned them on.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face — the face of one long dead — Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died.