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And, the last day being come, Man stood alone Ere sunrise on the world’s dismantled verge, Awaiting how from everywhere should urge The Coming of the Lord. And, behold, none Did come,—but indistinct from every realm Of earth and air and water, growing more And louder, shriller, heavier, a roar Up the dun atmosphere did overwhelm His ears; and as he looked affrighted round Every manner of beast innumerable All thro’ the shadows crying grew, until The wailing was like grass upon the ground. Asudden then within his human side Their anguish, since the goad he wielded first, And, since he gave them not to drink, their thirst, Darted compressed and vital.—As he died, Low in the East now lighting gorgeously He saw the last sea-serpent iris-mailed Which, with a spear transfixèd, yet availed To pluck the sun down into the dead sea.

He faced the sink, one foot up on the edge of the tub. She stood behind him, reaching around. In the mirror, her face rose over his shoulder like the moon, and like the moon she regarded him beautifully but without feeling, and he looked at her as he would at the moon:How beautiful! How distant! No smiling, no weeping, no talking. A man and a woman transacting their magnificent business with the usual equanimity. The man as a passenger walking the ship’s deck at evening and the woman as the moon over his shoulder oiling the ocean with light. Deep in the ship’s belly pistons churned and sailors fed the boilers' roar with coal. On deck just the engine’s dull thrum and a faint click as the woman sets her ring on the cool white lip of the sink.

The sea and a crescent strip of beach Show between the service station and a deserted shack A creek drains thru the beach Forming a ditch There is a discarded super-market cart in the ditch That beach is the edge of a nation There is something like shouting along the highway A California shouting On the long fast highway over the California mountains Point Pedro Its distant life It is impossible the world should be either good or bad If its colors are beautiful or if they are not beautiful If parts of it taste good or if no parts of it taste good It is as remarkable in one case as the other As against this We have suffered fear, we know something of fear And of humiliation mounting to horror The world above the edge of the foxhole belongs to the flying bullets, leaden superbeings For the men grovelling in the foxhole danger, danger in being drawn to them These little dumps The poem is about them Our hearts are twisted In dead men’s pride Dead men crowd us Lean over us In the emplacements The skull spins Empty of subject The hollow ego Flinching from the war’s huge air Tho we are delivery boys and bartenders We will choke on each other Minds may crack But not for what is discovered Unless that everyone knew And kept silent Our minds are split To seek the danger out From among the miserable soldiers

My body, laid out on a marble slab. Naked but for a linen sheet tucked under Its chin, as though to keep the patient warm. A solemn band approached; identified The late departed with what looked like mingled Relief, mild satisfaction, and bereavement. One of them took away an arm—the right, Was it?—and loped off with a spring in his step. Which prompted others to do likewise: here A shoulder (suitable for crying on), there a foot, there an eye and there an ear. Plump already, one scooped out the belly. Just who you’d imagine claimed the head. Not the one I hoped tugged loose a rib. Some, by no means all, I knew as friends; But felt no bitterness, instead, acceptance. This, while watching their several withdrawals, Travelers moving farther out and deeper Into the ringing distance—who all began To flourish, somehow more intently themselves Than they had earlier resolved to be. Was glad of that, despite a fit of shivers (Simple human nature still presiding) When I took note of the rummage that remained, Wishing a greener plot had been marked out For what had breathed with so much spark and promise. My turn, then, to come forward for a closer Look; and, since no one else had carried off That steady, flexibly strung pump at rest Beneath the sternum, take it for my own, Sensing its mute but anchored trust that parts Lucky for others would befriend as well— Oh love —even the heir that flesh once named.

Today there has been so much talk of things exploding into other things, so much that we all become curious, that we all run outside into the hot streets and hug. Romance is a grotto of eager stones anticipating light, or a girl whose teeth you can always see. With more sparkle and pop is the only way to live. Your confetti tongue explodes into acid jazz. Small typewriters that other people keep in their eyes click away at all our farewell parties. It is hard to pack for the rest of your life. Someone is always eating cold cucumber noodles. Someone will drop by later to help dismantle some furniture. A lot can go wrong if you sleep or think, but the trees go on waving their broken little hands.

i.m. And then the sun came slicing sideways, clear water reflecting it, giving it slant. A gloss of rain so quick and light that day hardly made a sound. The thought of sheets hung out and drying on the line, of seeds in soil and soil itself, the glutting ends of stems of leaves that will them to let fall up and out and through the trees, the shape that shoots could take, of you and this moment as it happens: our echoing hush as we try to hold the close music of the blackbird in the bush. • And then the sun continued on. Lough Neagh cooled under the firm keels of fishing boats on the water’s taut skin, their painted hulls in pointed arcs an emblem of balance so finely wrought that they could tell the weight of light or air. Each night we walk along the shore, expecting still to find your sturdy figure waist-deep in waders, plumbing darkness, hauling it in, but never again your grip on the reel and never again the deft music of the blackbird nesting in your hand.

(On the Signing of the Armistice, 11 Nov. 1918) I There had been years of Passion—scorching, cold, And much Despair, and Anger heaving high, Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold, Among the young, among the weak and old, And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?” II Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, Philosophies that sages long had taught, And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness. III The feeble folk at home had grown full-used To 'dug-outs', 'snipers', 'Huns', from the war-adept In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused; To day-dreamt men in millions, when they mused— To nightmare-men in millions when they slept. IV Waking to wish existence timeless, null, Sirius they watched above where armies fell; He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well. V So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly Were dead and damned, there sounded 'War is done!' One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, 'Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?' VI Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped, As they had raised it through the four years’ dance Of Death in the now familiar flats of France; And murmured, 'Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?' VII Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not, The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song. One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, 'What? Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?' VIII Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray, No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn, No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray; Worn horses mused: 'We are not whipped to-day;' No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn. IX Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency; There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky; Some could, some could not, shake off misery: The Sinister Spirit sneered: 'It had to be!' And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, 'Why?'

And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Too soon return'd to Earth! Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed, And o'er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth, There is an eye which could not brook A moment on that grave to look. I will not ask where thou liest low, Nor gaze upon the spot; There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not: It is enough for me to prove That what I lov'd, and long must love, Like common earth can rot; To me there needs no stone to tell, 'T is Nothing that I lov'd so well. Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, And canst not alter now. The love where Death has set his seal, Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, Nor falsehood disavow: And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; The worst can be but mine: The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, Shall never more be thine. The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep; Nor need I to repine That all those charms have pass'd away, I might have watch'd through long decay. The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd Must fall the earliest prey; Though by no hand untimely snatch'd, The leaves must drop away: And yet it were a greater grief To watch it withering, leaf by leaf, Than see it pluck'd to-day; Since earthly eye but ill can bear To trace the change to foul from fair. I know not if I could have borne To see thy beauties fade; The night that follow'd such a morn Had worn a deeper shade: Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd, And thou wert lovely to the last, Extinguish'd, not decay'd; As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high. As once I wept, if I could weep, My tears might well be shed, To think I was not near to keep One vigil o'er thy bed; To gaze, how fondly! on thy face, To fold thee in a faint embrace, Uphold thy drooping head; And show that love, however vain, Nor thou nor I can feel again. Yet how much less it were to gain, Though thou hast left me free, The loveliest things that still remain, Than thus remember thee! The all of thine that cannot die Through dark and dread Eternity Returns again to me, And more thy buried love endears Than aught except its living years.

You can’t say it that way any more. Bothered about beauty you have to Come out into the open, into a clearing, And rest. Certainly whatever funny happens to you Is OK. To demand more than this would be strange Of you, you who have so many lovers, People who look up to you and are willing To do things for you, but you think It’s not right, that if they really knew you . . . So much for self-analysis. Now, About what to put in your poem-painting: Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium. Names of boys you once knew and their sleds, Skyrockets are good—do they still exist? There are a lot of other things of the same quality As those I’ve mentioned. Now one must Find a few important words, and a lot of low-keyed, Dull-sounding ones. She approached me About buying her desk. Suddenly the street was Bananas and the clangor of Japanese instruments. Humdrum testaments were scattered around. His head Locked into mine. We were a seesaw. Something Ought to be written about how this affects You when you write poetry: The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind Colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage of its desire to communicate Something between breaths, if only for the sake Of others and their desire to understand you and desert you For other centers of communication, so that understanding May begin, and in doing so be undone.

I mean this thing I want to write and no other You will not be so clever as to resurrect the feathered the tatty wings of a costumed angel in my dining room tatty spatial realm room where I exist and look at things and eat them and float nine inches above the floor and no one else need know and no other poet will do The poet will do what the poet will do and mime or maim the poet meme—in fancy venue or classroom or focus group the wings of the poet relax and warm and shed and oracular shit out the window in a pile by the side of the road and the commitment of the poet to engage, subvert, refract, or remand is safe in my vagina at last where it belongs.