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I teach my friend, a fisherman gone blind, to cast true left, right or center and how far between lily pads and the fallen cedar. Darkness is precious, how long will darkness last? Our bait, worms, have no professors, they live in darkness, can be taught fear of light. Cut into threes even sixes they live separate lives, recoil from light. He tells me, “I am seldom blind when I dream, morning is anthracite, I play blind man’s bluff, I cannot find myself, my shoe, the sink, tell time, but that’s spilled milk and ink, the lost and found  I cannot find. I can tell the difference between a mollusk and a whelk, a grieving liar and a lemon rind.” Laughing, he says, “I still hope the worm will turn, pink, lank, and warm, dined out on apples of good fortune. Books have a faintly legible smell. Divorced from the sun, I am a kind of bachelor henpecked by the night. Sometimes I use my darkness well— in the overcast and sunlight of my mind. I can still wink, sing, my eyes are songs.” Darkness is precious, how long will darkness last? He could not fish, he could not walk, he fell in his own feces. He wept. He died where he fell. The power of beauty to right all wrongs is hard for me to sell.

Crude seeing’s all our joy: could we discern The cold dark infinite vast where atoms burn —Lone suns—in flesh, our treasure and our play, Who’d dare to breathe this fern-thick bird-rich day?

A blind man, on the thoroughfare, Startle-eyed as an owl by day, Piping a dismal little air, Taps here and there, loses his way, Tootles awry his time-old ditty Undauntedly, as by his side Lopes his dog, guides him through the city, Specter diurnal, sleepy-eyed. Days, stark, wash over him, unlit; He hears the dark world’s constant din And all that life unseen, as it Rolls, rushing, like a flood walled in! God knows what black chimeras haunt That brain opaque, what lot befalls; And what dire spells the mind is wont To scribble on those death-vault walls! Like prisoner grown half-mad, who, pent, Rots beneath Venice in her jail Eternal, and whose hours are spent Scratching a message with a nail... But when the torch, in tomb immured, Dies in the breath of death, maybe The soul, to shades’ gloom long inured, Will see with deathly clarity!

A blind man was riding an unheated train, From Bryansk he was traveling home with his fate. Fate whispered to him so the whole car could hear: And why should you care about blindness and war? It’s good, she was saying, you’re sightless and poor. If you were not blind, you’d never survive. The Germans won’t kill you, you’re nothing to them. Allow me to lift that bag on your shoulder— The one with the holes, the empty torn one. Let me just raise your eyelids wide open. The blind man was traveling home with his fate, Now thankful for blindness. Happy about it.

She had turned her face up into a rain of light, and came on smiling. The light trickled down her forehead and into her eyes. It ran down into the neck of her sweatshirt and wet the white tops of her breasts. Her brown shoes splashed on into the light. The moment was like a circus wagon rolling before her through puddles of light, a cage on wheels, and she walked fast behind it, exuberant, curious, pushing her cane through the bars, poking and prodding, while the world cowered back in a corner.

for Mandred Hecht the management organized the company and that was splendid enough chairs for all a quick change of clothes and scene brings us to the lawn of the company stretching out under our gaze which itself beer in hand stops short of the horizon (grazes) everything else vanished a certain rhythm (uncertain) of the blood directed attention to the tapping foot was this happiness being witnessed was this many weeks did the people over there look same as the people over there (hmm)     who were they were they salesmen     could we brush aside the tapping that by now had given way to winking and that to sleeping and then to tapping again what was being what was being covered up      was it a fabulous shoulder gleaming     was it an exact (and exacting) self-image suffering no monkey business     were they happy     did the countryside bloom, did not subside who were they     were they salesmen     and given fresh air and sun     who were their wives     were they salesmen, too  from here they look organized and like good company not to overlook the flowers and facts what were they doing here     had they been invited     did they receive invitations     with what grace was it many weeks     they "you bet I am" emotion reflected (a shoulder)     whose were they sales men (and women) did they make rounds     and (ooph) how spiffy did they look      did they look up as the management passed threading toward the logo-decorated dais were they former salesmen (and women)     did they look it     what was their country of origin     was it organized     who did they think they were     (or weren't) how did they look in the light of the flowers of the facts were they news     the kidding aside the beer flowed the lawn rolled endlessly in and out like a boat a picture of waves     was a storm brewing     when vacations came around were they still to be salesmen (and women)     and retirement what about retirement but who could be retiring under the gentle hand of unlimited beer and lawn were those beer-colored storm clouds rolling in were they invited     were they salesmen (and women)     where did they come from     would they go away could they be covered up      why were they unresponsive to good sense      and why were they gleaming did this look like a good place for rain to retire in would rain fall without invitation     would it spoil the company what effect would it have on self-image would the people look the same after the rain     were they salesmen (and women)     why were they gleaming     did the self-image include shoulders were they inviting were they cloud-like were they salesmen (and women) organized to manage a quick change was the self-image good company was it a salesman or a saleswoman invited to be a manager would they make the dais what about the clouds were there enough chairs for all the managers would they live happy in those chairs after they were managers     would they settle for chairs

Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down — the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue flakes — Hairy looking trees stand out in long alleys over a wild solitude. The man turns and there — his solitary track stretched out upon the world.

If Black History Month is not viable then wind does not carry the seeds and drop them on fertile ground rain does not dampen the land and encourage the seeds to root sun does not warm the earth and kiss the seedlings and tell them plain: You’re As Good As Anybody Else You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

—for James I. Ina 1. The emotion of trucks, buses & troop trains brings them here, to the wrong side of another state. A woman at the Klamath Falls depot calls it the wrong side of the ocean. 2 Crumbs hide around the table legs in the mess hall, dishes & silverware clink a strange song. Families talk across long tables. Questions drop like puzzles to the unfinished floor. 3 Blocks away from their new home a woman finds a latrine not backed up. Stands in line, waiting her turn in the wind. Down the center of the open room: 12 toilet stools, six pair, back to back. Sits down and asks for privacy, holding a towel in front of her with trembling hands. 4 In a North Dakota prisoner-of-war camp, surrounded by Germans & Italians, a quiet man hammers a samurai sword from scrap metal at night in a boiler room. A secret edge to hold against the dark mornings. He sends love notes to his pregnant wife in Tule Lake sewn in pants mailed home for mending. His censored letters mention a torn pocket. She finds the paper near the rip, folded & secret in the lining. White voices claim the other side of the ocean is so crowded the people want to find death across the phantom river. Headlines shake their nervous words. Out on the coast beach birds print their calligraphy in the sand. It is such a small country.

Under diagram                                  of a letter-less paragraph, block white.       Silent quadrates,          grid                         imperceptible where the arrangement                             cross-puzzles itself. Blank words         equidistant         by page         flectional         by print. Structure of paper           exists to limit communicatio of sound               of silence;              how word-types               appear, how fonts           distinguish                                 an ipseity  of language. The pages' margins         shape set-text                                 a voice unwrit; contains unseen               accent,                                pressure wave code. Where breath              within paper          functions                 a sensation thought, actions           charge                   form.                                      Without a point              an i will forget           its direction,              or a j with its curve            will not show                           its breadth                                   of line.