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The chair has arms. The clock, a face. The kites have long and twirly tails. The tacks have heads. The books have spines. The toolbox has a set of nails. Our shoes have tongues, the marbles, eyes. The wooden desk has legs and seat. The cups have lips. My watch has hands. The classroom rulers all have feet. Heads, arms hands, nails, spines, legs, feet, tails, face, lips, tongues, eyes.

A.    Use of the lift going up is permitted, provided B.    Use of the lift going down is not permitted, provided C.    Use of the lift going up is D.    Use of the lift going down is not E.    Use of the lift going up F.    Use of the lift going G.    Use of the lift H.    Is      Is not I.    Use J.    U--

Lucy Doolin, first day on the job, stroked his goatee and informed the seven of us in his charge his name was short for Lucifer, and that his father, a man he never knew, had been possessed, as his mother had told him, of both an odd sense of humor and a deep and immitigable bitterness. Also that the same man had named Lucy’s twin brother, born dead, Jesus Christ. These facts, he said, along with his tattoos and Mohawked black hair, we should, in our toils on his behalf, remember. As we should also always remember to call him only by that otherwise most womanly diminutive, and never, he warned, by his given nor surname, least of all with the title “Mister” attached, which would remind him of that same most hated father and plunge him therefore into a mood he could not promise he would, he said, “behave appropriately within.” Fortunately, our job, unlike the social difficulties attached thereto, was simple: collect the trash from the county’s back roads. Although, given Lucy’s insistence on thoroughness, this meant not only beer cans and bottles, all manner of cast-off paper and plastics, but also the occasional condom too, as well as the festering roadkill fresh and ridden with maggotry, or desiccate and liftable only from the hot summer tar with a square-bladed shovel, all of which was to be tossed into the bed of the township flatbed truck we ourselves rode to and from the job in. By fifty-yard increments then we traveled. He was never not smoking a cigarette. Late every afternoon, at the dump, while we unloaded our tonnage of trash, he sat with Stump McCarriston, sexton of the dump and the dump’s constant resident, in the shade, next to a green, decrepit trailer we marveled at and strangely envied, since every inch of wall we could see through the open door was plastered with fold-outs and pages from every Stump-salvaged Playboy and nudie magazine he had ever found among the wreckage there. Stump, we understood, was the ugliest man on earth. Even had Lucy not told us so, we would have known, by the olfactory rudeness within twenty yards of his hovel, that he never bathed. And once, while we shoveled and scraped, he took up the .22 from the rack beside his door and popped with amazing accuracy three rats not fifty feet from us, then walked to their carcasses, skinned them out, and hung their hides on a scavenged grocery store rack to dry. He was making, Lucy explained, a rat hide coat we could see, come the fall, except for school. As for school, it was a concept Stump could not fathom and Lucy had no use for, on the truck’s dash all that summer Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, a tome he said he’d read already eleven times, this summer being the twelfth. We thought, in some way, it might have had to do with something like the gallery Stump’s trailer contained, the first word of its title meaning something to us, the last nothing at all. There were things about men we might be unable ever to know, which we somehow knew was lucky. And Lucky, incidentally, was the name of the cat, fat and mangy, that, once Stump was back in the shade with Lucy, began, one by one, to consume the hideless rats. The town we came from was sinking into the emptiness of a thousand abandoned coal mine shafts beneath it, and rats were more common than hares and universally despised. They shamed us, it seemed, as we were shamed by ignorance and curiosity— the bodies of those women on the walls, the provenance of rats the very earth offered up like a plague, the burden of a name like Lucifer or Stump, whose name, as it was scrawled on his mailbox, seemed to be Stumplin Reilly McCarriston, Esquire. Of the seven of us, one would die in Vietnam, one, after medical school, would hang himself from a beam in his parents’ basement, the others merely gone, vanished in actuality if not in memory. Leaving me, alone, to tell this story. How Stump would spend his last twenty years in prison, having shot Lucy—one slender, flattening .22 slug through the forehead—as he stood fifty feet away, balanced atop the tub of an ancient wringer washer, arms extended, like Jesus Christ, said Stump, whose trailer was bulldozed into the dump itself even before the trial, and who, no doubt, by some court-appointed lawyer if not the appalled sheriff himself, was forced to bathe and shave, to step into the unknown country of a scentless white shirt and black businessman’s trousers, in order to offer his only yet most sincere defense, that Lucifer—Mr. Doolin, as the court insisted—had told him to.

(excerpt) AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD Wherein, by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, Whom all do celebrate, who know they have one (For who is sure he hath a soul, unless It see, and judge, and follow worthiness, And by deeds praise it? He who doth not this, May lodge an inmate soul, but 'tis not his) When that queen ended here her progress time, And, as t'her standing house, to heaven did climb, Where loath to make the saints attend her long, She's now a part both of the choir, and song; This world, in that great earthquake languished; For in a common bath of tears it bled, Which drew the strongest vital spirits out; But succour'd then with a perplexed doubt, Whether the world did lose, or gain in this, (Because since now no other way there is, But goodness, to see her, whom all would see, All must endeavour to be good as she) This great consumption to a fever turn'd, And so the world had fits; it joy'd, it mourn'd; And, as men think, that agues physic are, And th' ague being spent, give over care, So thou, sick world, mistak'st thy self to be Well, when alas, thou'rt in a lethargy. Her death did wound and tame thee then, and then Thou might'st have better spar'd the sun, or man. That wound was deep, but 'tis more misery That thou hast lost thy sense and memory. 'Twas heavy then to hear thy voice of moan, But this is worse, that thou art speechless grown. Thou hast forgot thy name thou hadst; thou wast Nothing but she, and her thou hast o'erpast. For, as a child kept from the font until A prince, expected long, come to fulfill The ceremonies, thou unnam'd had'st laid, Had not her coming, thee her palace made; Her name defin'd thee, gave thee form, and frame, And thou forget'st to celebrate thy name. Some months she hath been dead (but being dead, Measures of times are all determined) But long she'ath been away, long, long, yet none Offers to tell us who it is that's gone. But as in states doubtful of future heirs, When sickness without remedy impairs The present prince, they're loath it should be said, "The prince doth languish," or "The prince is dead;" So mankind feeling now a general thaw, A strong example gone, equal to law, The cement which did faithfully compact And glue all virtues, now resolv'd, and slack'd, Thought it some blasphemy to say sh'was dead, Or that our weakness was discovered In that confession; therefore spoke no more Than tongues, the soul being gone, the loss deplore. But though it be too late to succour thee, Sick world, yea dead, yea putrified, since she Thy' intrinsic balm, and thy preservative, Can never be renew'd, thou never live, I (since no man can make thee live) will try, What we may gain by thy anatomy. Her death hath taught us dearly that thou art Corrupt and mortal in thy purest part. Let no man say, the world itself being dead, 'Tis labour lost to have discovered The world's infirmities, since there is none Alive to study this dissection; For there's a kind of world remaining still, Though she which did inanimate and fill The world, be gone, yet in this last long night, Her ghost doth walk; that is a glimmering light, A faint weak love of virtue, and of good, Reflects from her on them which understood Her worth; and though she have shut in all day, The twilight of her memory doth stay, Which, from the carcass of the old world free, Creates a new world, and new creatures be Produc'd. The matter and the stuff of this, Her virtue, and the form our practice is. And though to be thus elemented, arm These creatures from home-born intrinsic harm, (For all assum'd unto this dignity So many weedless paradises be, Which of themselves produce no venomous sin, Except some foreign serpent bring it in) Yet, because outward storms the strongest break, And strength itself by confidence grows weak, This new world may be safer, being told The dangers and diseases of the old; For with due temper men do then forgo, Or covet things, when they their true worth know. There is no health; physicians say that we At best enjoy but a neutrality. And can there be worse sickness than to know That we are never well, nor can be so? We are born ruinous: poor mothers cry That children come not right, nor orderly; Except they headlong come and fall upon An ominous precipitation. How witty's ruin! how importunate Upon mankind! It labour'd to frustrate Even God's purpose; and made woman, sent For man's relief, cause of his languishment. They were to good ends, and they are so still, But accessory, and principal in ill, For that first marriage was our funeral; One woman at one blow, then kill'd us all, And singly, one by one, they kill us now. We do delightfully our selves allow To that consumption; and profusely blind, We kill our selves to propagate our kind. And yet we do not that; we are not men; There is not now that mankind, which was then, When as the sun and man did seem to strive, (Joint tenants of the world) who should survive; When stag, and raven, and the long-liv'd tree, Compar'd with man, died in minority; When, if a slow-pac'd star had stol'n away From the observer's marking, he might stay Two or three hundred years to see't again, And then make up his observation plain; When, as the age was long, the size was great (Man's growth confess'd, and recompens'd the meat), So spacious and large, that every soul Did a fair kingdom, and large realm control; And when the very stature, thus erect, Did that soul a good way towards heaven direct. Where is this mankind now? Who lives to age, Fit to be made Methusalem his page? Alas, we scarce live long enough to try Whether a true-made clock run right, or lie. Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow. So short is life, that every peasant strives, In a torn house, or field, to have three lives. And as in lasting, so in length is man Contracted to an inch, who was a span; For had a man at first in forests stray'd, Or shipwrack'd in the sea, one would have laid A wager, that an elephant, or whale, That met him, would not hastily assail A thing so equall to him; now alas, The fairies, and the pigmies well may pass As credible; mankind decays so soon, We'are scarce our fathers' shadows cast at noon, Only death adds t'our length: nor are we grown In stature to be men, till we are none. But this were light, did our less volume hold All the old text; or had we chang'd to gold Their silver; or dispos'd into less glass Spirits of virtue, which then scatter'd was. But 'tis not so; w'are not retir'd, but damp'd; And as our bodies, so our minds are cramp'd; 'Tis shrinking, not close weaving, that hath thus In mind and body both bedwarfed us. We seem ambitious, God's whole work t'undo; Of nothing he made us, and we strive too, To bring our selves to nothing back; and we Do what we can, to do't so soon as he. With new diseases on our selves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far. Thus man, this world's vice-emperor, in whom All faculties, all graces are at home (And if in other creatures they appear, They're but man's ministers and legates there To work on their rebellions, and reduce Them to civility, and to man's use); This man, whom God did woo, and loath t'attend Till man came up, did down to man descend, This man, so great, that all that is, is his, O what a trifle, and poor thing he is! If man were anything, he's nothing now; Help, or at least some time to waste, allow T'his other wants, yet when he did depart With her whom we lament, he lost his heart. She, of whom th'ancients seem'd to prophesy, When they call'd virtues by the name of she; She in whom virtue was so much refin'd, That for alloy unto so pure a mind She took the weaker sex; she that could drive The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve, Out of her thoughts, and deeds, and purify All, by a true religious alchemy, She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou knowest this, Thou knowest how poor a trifling thing man is, And learn'st thus much by our anatomy, The heart being perish'd, no part can be free, And that except thou feed (not banquet) on The supernatural food, religion, Thy better growth grows withered, and scant; Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant. Then, as mankind, so is the world's whole frame Quite out of joint, almost created lame, For, before God had made up all the rest, Corruption ent'red, and deprav'd the best; It seiz'd the angels, and then first of all The world did in her cradle take a fall, And turn'd her brains, and took a general maim, Wronging each joint of th'universal frame. The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then Both beasts and plants, curs'd in the curse of man. So did the world from the first hour decay, That evening was beginning of the day, And now the springs and summers which we see, Like sons of women after fifty be. And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out, The sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets and the firmament They seek so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, All just supply, and all relation; Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that then can be None of that kind, of which he is, but he. This is the world's condition now, and now She that should all parts to reunion bow, She that had all magnetic force alone, To draw, and fasten sund'red parts in one; She whom wise nature had invented then When she observ'd that every sort of men Did in their voyage in this world's sea stray, And needed a new compass for their way; She that was best and first original Of all fair copies, and the general Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast Gilt the West Indies, and perfum'd the East; Whose having breath'd in this world, did bestow Spice on those Isles, and bade them still smell so, And that rich India which doth gold inter, Is but as single money, coin'd from her; She to whom this world must it self refer, As suburbs or the microcosm of her, She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou know'st this, Thou know'st how lame a cripple this world is

In the morning of the tribe this name Ancapagari was given to these mountains. The name, then alive, spread into the world and never returned. Ancapagari: no foot-step ever spoken, no mule deer killed from its foothold, left for dead. Ancapagari opened the stones. Pine roots gripped peak rock with their claws. Water dug into the earth and vanished, boiling up again in another place. The water was bitten by aspen, generations of aspen shot their light colored trunks into space. Ancapagari. At that time, if the whisper was in your mouth, you were lighted. Now these people are buried. The root-taking, finished. Buried in everything, thousands taken root. The roots swell, nesting. Openings widen for the roots to surface. They sway within you in steady wind of your breath. You are forever swinging between this being and another, one being and another. There is a word for it crawling in your mouth each night. Speak it. Ancapagari has circled, returned to these highlands. The yellow pines deathless, the sparrow hawks scull, the waters are going numb. Ancapagari longs to be spoken in each tongue. It is the name of the god who has come from among us.

Calm appeared, his soul stopped, a crow staring as he snatched down miniature angels, trapped them in jars, capping the light away to make a hush out of glory songs, a crying out from the joyful aubades they breathe as easy as moonlight on jars of preserves, their throats full of fear now, the brave breast crumpled in his child fingers, their prisons invisible to the cherubim searching for heaven's missing songsters trapped in blind ways of getting even at a world that would make him small, make him an impotent wonder, curl his genius under like a witch's toes when his father died chewing on cheese and cornbread, chocolate surprise in the sun, an unkind ending. He grew in the way of genius, no charts showing where he ended and the world began, how cities figure in the jagged sweep of cornfields, endless thousands of shouts up into the evening, listening to the future speaking, like the old man in the schoolyard, a stranger by the wishing pond in the woods, or dogs that stand up like men in hats— these the Corinthian signs he mistook for an alphabet giving the right to molest children. Now wisdom is sour rubbing medicine pasted over nightmares, not the proper wealth of an old man, the arms of his neighbors around him like laurels.

The star dissolved in evening—the one star The silently and night O soon now, soon And still the light now and still now the large Relinquishing and through the pools of blue Still, still the swallows and a wind now and the tree Gathering darkness: I was small. I lay Beside my mother on the grass, and sleep Came— slow hooves and dripping with the dark The velvet muzzles, the white feet that move In a dream water and O soon now soon Sleep and the night. And I was not afraid. Her hand lay over mine. Her fingers knew Darkness,—and sleep—the silent lands, the far Far off of morning where I should awake.

It’s as when following the others’ lines, Which are the tracks of somebody gone before, Leaving me mischievous clues, telling me who They were and who it was they weren’t, And who it is I am because of them, Or, just for the moment, reading them, I am, Although the next moment I’m back in myself, and lost. My father at the piano saying to me, “Listen to this, he called the piece Warum?” And the nearest my father could come to saying what He made of that was lamely to say he didn’t, Schumann didn’t, my father didn’t, know why. “What’s in a dog’s heart”? I once asked in a poem, And Christopher Ricks when he read it said, “Search me.” He wasn’t just being funny, he was right. You can’t tell anything much about who you are By exercising on the Romantic bars. What are the wild waves saying? I don’t know. And Shelley didn’t know, and knew he didn’t. In his great poem, “Ode to the West Wind,” he Said that the leaves of his pages were blowing away, Dead leaves, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.

The damp had got its grip years ago but gone unnoticed. The heads of the joists feathered slowly in the cavity wall and the room’s wet belly had begun to bow. Once we’d ripped the boards up, it all came out: the smell, at first, then the crumbling wood gone to seed, all its muscles wasted. You pottered back and to with tea, soda bread, eighty years shaking on a plastic tray. One by one we looked up, nodded, then slipped under the floor. We moved down there like fish in moonlight, or divers round an old ship.

The builder who first bridged Niagara’s gorge, Before he swung his cable, shore to shore, Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands To grasp upon the further cliff and draw A greater cord, and then a greater yet; Till at the last across the chasm swung The cable then the mighty bridge in air! So we may send our little timid thought Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands— Send out our love and faith to thread the deep— Thought after thought until the little cord Has greatened to a chain no chance can break, And we are anchored to the Infinite!