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"Myrtle loves Harry"—It is sometimes hard to remember a thing like that, Hard to think about it, and no one knows what to do with it when he has it, So write it out on a billboard that stands under the yellow light of an "L" platform among popcorn wrappers and crushed cigars, A poster that says "Mama I Love Crispy Wafers So." Leave it on a placard where somebody else gave the blonde lady a pencil moustache, and another perplexed citizen deposited: "Jesus Saves. Jesus Saves." One can lay this bundle down there with the others, And never lose it, or forget it, or want it. "Myrtle loves Harry." They live somewhere.

Harry loves Myrtle—He has strong arms, from the warehouse, And on Sunday when they take the bus to emerald meadows he doesn't say: "What will your chastity amount to when your flesh withers in a little while?" No, On Sunday, when they picnic in emerald meadows they look at the Sunday paper: GIRL SLAYS BANKER-BETRAYER They spread it around on the grass BATH-TUB STIRS JERSEY ROW And then they sit down on it, nice. Harry doesn't say "Ziggin's Ointment for withered flesh, Cures thousands of men and women of moles, warts, red veins, flabby throat, scalp and hair diseases, Not expensive, and fully guaranteed." No, Harry says nothing at all, He smiles, And they kiss in the emerald meadows on the Sunday paper.

The humble sense of being alive under the towering sun fills the nectary and ripens apricots down to the last one, if Mnemosyne wakens from apathy each moment. It is the soft burly sound of a bee tumbled in fritillary, is it not? But if memory, as if to illustrate the mind was not yours to have, the mind was not given, fails us, leaving us in our underpants in the garden, should we not hate the garden, or the woman whose garden it is? And sunlight. Thunder. Rain. Hardened in heart against what earth compels and seizes, goddamning, goddamned rain.

1 & the radio reports how in 2050 farming Massachusetts will be like farming Georgia— all’s flux, no one can say what will grow in Georgia, where maples will grow then or whose fine taps will sap sugar from the cold in spring. Will we get syrup from the boreal forest, peaches from Massachusetts? 2 Drone strikes & opium poppies. Oil spills & poisoned wells. Drought zone. Famine. War zone. 3 Artisanal, this intervention: what gift this day. 4 My inner cynic says don’t bother this is navel gazing & my friend at Yale says my hunger to be near zucchinis will not save the planet from real hunger except I remember in the film on gleaning when the priest in his compassion says: those who glean now out of spiritual hunger also should be fed. 5 Ecosystem of yard or field or mind: these cucumbers are more art than science, more daydream than global action (if we separate the two). But digging now I feel an otherness— life, a great inhuman freedom— here I work a plot that also grounds—

Wisdom is a kindly spirit but does it love me? And righteousness? There’s nothing in it. To poetry I leave my senses, my deregulation, custodial duties, and to be a janitor is a great consolation. It gave me my mother back through all her years. To love these children, so full of neurons and consciousness. What joy to clean up and put a shine on their mess. To my mother I leave my veil, my wing, the window and time. I, artifact. In this age the hand is a voice. I leave the voice, the wonder, the mirror, and my lens, bent and beholden to the worm, leaf-work in wrought iron, eerie illuminations and deep-sea vision. I’ve seen the Eurostar, the drunken boat, and Davy Jones’ Locker. I’ve seen Spanish galleons and the H.S. Mauberley covered in brine. There is this line from cloud dander to the solo bulb of mourning, a string through common prayer. I like it when the gray-green shadows suddenly dayglo over the rushes. The wind in my head. To write is an equal and opposite reaction my comrade, communard, my friendo. What is it finally thinking what in winter’s dusty alcove, the body tocks. The day was cloudy. The light muddy, dreary when they took it down. To Times Roman I give my stammer, my sullenness, my new world violence, form and all that, forms, and all that paper, gusts. Little buttress. I send love and weapons to everyone possessed with night visions. When those green lights flash and blink, is that it? When the “it” continues strangely for a bit, then falls into a line, is it over? I quantified daily the wonder in the grain. I found I was over and singular yet many, the many and the singular, the many and the evolutionary, the many in the grain. Many more. Who in hell am I writing for? This vision is silly, teenage, and mine, a spot on the negative, a hole in composition. I quantify, I loaf, I wonder, I find, I rev. Here the days’ mud, night is a satellite, and anger, my cleft, my birthmark and star. Anger might be a better way to say “I love you,” truer than “how are you in space”? Are you cold, can I get you a blanket? To the polestar I leave my alien regalia, my off-world headdress. I leave acoustic forms in time, blooming, sudsy, inconsolable. If you are unsatisfied, then welcome. Here there are people working every corner of every inch of grass. The meticulously arranged outside reminds me of ocean and feels old. In space the letterforms “I love” oscillate in waves. I lose myself in waves speaking the half of me that forgot to say “goodbye” when I meant to say “how come.” Memory continues to bloom. More songs about death and dying, songs of inexperience. More songs about being and loss, being in loss, more songs about seeing and feeling. If you are critical, all the better to see and to miss it, to misunderstand, to fail at empathy and love, to not understand love and to love, to be diseverything and to love, whatever. To mercy I leave whatever.

We pull off to a road shack in Massachusetts to watch men walk on the moon. We did the same thing for three two one blast off, and now we watch the same men bounce in and out of craters. I want a Coke and a hamburger. Because the men are walking on the moon which is now irrefutably not green, not cheese, not a shiny dime floating in a cold blue, the way I'd thought, the road shack people don't notice we are a black family not from there, the way it mostly goes. This talking through static, bounces in space- boots, tethered to cords is much stranger, stranger even than we are.

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, Thick breaks the red flame; All Etna heaves fiercely Her forest-clothed frame. Not here, O Apollo! Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea, Where the moon-silver'd inlets Send far their light voice Up the still vale of Thisbe, O speed, and rejoice! On the sward at the cliff-top Lie strewn the white flocks, On the cliff-side the pigeons Roost deep in the rocks. In the moonlight the shepherds, Soft lull'd by the rills, Lie wrapped in their blankets Asleep on the hills. —What forms are these coming So white through the gloom? What garments out-glistening The gold-flower'd broom? What sweet-breathing presence Out-perfumes the thyme? What voices enrapture The night's balmy prime? 'Tis Apollo comes leading His choir, the Nine. —The leader is fairest, But all are divine. They are lost in the hollows! They stream up again! What seeks on this mountain The glorified train?— They bathe on this mountain, In the spring by their road; Then on to Olympus, Their endless abode. —Whose proase do they mention? Of what is it told?— What will be for ever; What was from of old. First hymn they the Father Of all things; and then, The rest of immortals, The action of men. The day in his hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm.

I. The time has come for the nation to turn a new page by righting wrongs of the past. We apologise for laws and policies that inflicted profound grief, suffering, and loss and for the removal of children from families, communities, and country. For the pain of these, their descendants, and for families left behind, to mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, for indignity inflicted on a proud people, we say sorry. We resolve that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again and look to a future based on mutual respect, where all, whatever their origins, are equal partners. Spoken by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, introduced in January and delivered November 29, 2008, the day after he was sworn into office

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay trailing in me and I believe you. How could I not feel you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass, or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving. If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you. It is enough, you say, that surfaces grow so distant. Maybe you darken, already too much changed, maybe in your house you would be content where no incident emerges, but for smoke or glass or air, such things held simply to be voiceless. And if you mean me, I believe you. Or if you should darken, this inwardness would be misspent, and flinching I might pause, and add to these meager incidents the words. Some books should stay formal on the shelves. So surely I heard you, in your complication aware, snow holding where it might weightless rest, and should you fold into me—trackless, misspent, too much arranged—I might believe you but swiftly shut, lines of smoke rising through snow, here where it seems no good word emerges. Though it is cold, I am aware such reluctance could lose these blinking hours to simple safety. Here is an inwardless purpose. In these hours when snow shuts, it may be we empty, amounting to something. How could I not wait for those few words, which we might enter.

Soft songs, like birds, die in poison air So my song cannot now be candy. Anger rots the oak and elm; roses are rare, Seldom seen through blind despair. And my murmur cannot be heard Above the din and damn. The night is full Of buggers and bastards; no moon or stars Light the sky. And my candy is deferred Till peacetime, when my voice shall be light, Like down, lilting in the air; then shall I Sing of beaches, white in the magic sun, And of moons and maidens at midnight.