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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.

I saluted the famous river as I do every year Turning south as if the plough steered, Kicking, at the start of a new furrow, my back To the shady purple gardens with benches under plum trees By the river that hunts between piers and sandbanks— I began threading the long bridge, I bowed my head And lifted my hands from the wheel for an instant of trust, I faced the long rows of vines curving up the hillside Lightly like feathers, and longer than the swallow’s flight, My road already traced before me in a dance Of three nights and three days, Of sidestepping hills and crescent lights blinding me (If there was just a bar counter and ice and a glass, and a room upstairs: But it rushed past me and how many early starts before The morning when the looped passes descend to the ruined arch?) She came rising up out of the water, her eyes were like sandbanks The wrinkles in her forehead were like the flaws in the mist (maybe a long narrow boat with a man lying down and a rod and line like a frond of hair dipping in the stream) She was humming the song about the estuary, and the delights Of a salt ocean, the lighthouse like a summons; and she told me: The land will not go to that measure, it lasts, you’ll see How the earth widens and mountains are empty, only With tracks that search and dip, from here to the city of Rome Where the road gallops up to the dome as big as the sun. You will see your sister going ahead of you And she will not need to rest, but you must lie In the dry air of your hotel where the traffic grinds before dawn, The cello changing gear at the foot of the long hill, And think of the story of the suitors on horseback Getting ready to trample up the mountain of glass.

Crumbling is not an instant's Act A fundamental pause Dilapidation's processes Are organized Decays — 'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul A Cuticle of Dust A Borer in the Axis An Elemental Rust — Ruin is formal — Devil's work Consecutive and slow — Fail in an instant, no man did Slipping — is Crashe's law —

Crying, my little one, footsore and weary? Fall asleep, pretty one, warm on my shoulder: I must tramp on through the winter night dreary, While the snow falls on me colder and colder. You are my one, and I have not another; Sleep soft, my darling, my trouble and treasure; Sleep warm and soft in the arms of your mother, Dreaming of pretty things, dreaming of pleasure.

Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing. We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-flesh. But in this valley the snow falls silently all day, and out our window We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in our little house, We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like a fantasy, the snow-clad trees So graceful. In our new bed, which is big enough to seem like the north pasture almost With our two cats, Cooker and Smudgins, lying undisturbed in the southeastern and southwestern corners, We lie loving and warm, looking out from time to time. “Snowbound,” we say. We speak of the poet Who lived with his young housekeeper long ago in the mountains of the western province, the kingdom Of cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and snow fell for many months Across the pass and drifted deep in the vale. In our kitchen the maple-fire murmurs In our stove. We eat cheese and new-made bread and jumbo Spanish olives Which have been steeped in our special brine of jalapeños and garlic and dill and thyme. We have a nip or two from the small inexpensive cognac that makes us smile and sigh. For a while we close the immense index of images that is our lives—for instance, The child on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico sitting naked in 1966 outside his family’s hut, Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course we see the child every day, We hold out our hands, we touch him shyly, we make offerings to his implacability. No, the index cannot close. And how shall we survive? We don’t and cannot and will never Know. Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable. The machine, Like an immense clanking vibrating shuddering unnameable contraption as big as a house, as big as the whole town, May break through and lurch into our valley at any moment, at any moment. Cheers, baby. Here’s to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers and then falls back.

Sometimes they are the only thing beautiful about a hotel. Like transients, come winter they have a way of disappearing, disguised as dirty light, limp beside a puttied pane. Then some April afternoon a roomer jacks a window open, a breeze intrudes, resuscitates memory, and suddenly they want to fly, while men, looking up from the street, are deceived a moment into thinking a girl in an upper story is waving.

It wasn’t a man That knocked me down With the thrill of a slice Of my will. She was mannish, Chilled, flung Her will across Mine then laughed At my shock, when she Gripped my neck while Lingering over a request For the evening meal. Later I sliced a tomato Close to my wrist. The door was open. She had warned me: Never shut it against Her. Otherwise I was free to come And go. Maybe she was Right: I was zero To the bone. Meanwhile, I had left the hose In the pond. The goldfish Cowered in the reeds. Whose side were they on? I am ill, I thought, Slogging across Soggy green. If I bow any lower I will be looking up At moss.

After Francesco Clemente ’ s Indian Miniature #16 The sun-face looms over me, gigantic-hot, smelling of iron. Its rays striated, rasp-red and muscled as the tongues of iguanas. They are trying to lick away my name. But I am not afraid. I hold in my hands (where did I get them) enormous blue scissors that are just the color of sky. I bring the blades together, like a song. The rays fall around me curling a bit, like dried carrot peel. A far sound in the air—fire or rain? And when I’ve cut all the way to the center of the sun I see flowers, flowers, flowers.

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair, Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair State in wonted manner keep: Hesperus entreats thy light, Goddess excellently bright. Earth, let not thy envious shade Dare itself to interpose; Cynthia's shining orb was made Heaven to clear when day did close: Bless us then with wished sight, Goddess excellently bright. Lay thy bow of pearl apart And thy crystal-shining quiver; Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever: Thou that mak'st a day of night, Goddess excellently bright.

The cypress is the tree’s grief and not the tree, and it has no shadow because it is the tree’s shadow —Bassam Hajjar The cypress broke like a minaret, and slept on the road upon its chapped shadow, dark, green, as it has always been. No one got hurt. The vehicles sped over its branches. The dust blew into the windshields ... / The cypress broke, but the pigeon in a neighboring house didn’t change its public nest. And two migrant birds hovered above the hem of the place, and exchanged some symbols. And a woman said to her neighbor: Say, did you see a storm? She said: No, and no bulldozer either ... / And the cypress broke. And those passing by the wreckage said: Maybe it got bored with being neglected, or it grew old with the days, it is long like a giraffe, and little in meaning like a dust broom, and couldn’t shade two lovers. And a boy said: I used to draw it perfectly, its figure was easy to draw. And a girl said: The sky today is incomplete because the cypress broke. And a young man said: But the sky today is complete because the cypress broke. And I said to myself: Neither mystery nor clarity, the cypress broke, and that is all there is to it: the cypress broke!