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Great Creator, why did you make the peanut? —GWC Arachis Hypogaea may have been smuggled to North America by slaves who hid seeds of survival in their hair. Despite your nakedness, the chains, the stench, if white men did not eat you, you might come to a cruel land where, tended by moonlight and exhaustion, your seed might grow to be your children's manna in the wilderness. Arachis Hypogaea, or goober, an annual preferring warmth and sun, is an attractive plant, resembling clover. It bears flowers of two distinct genders: the staminate, or “male,” yellow, pretty, and the inconspicuous pistillate “female.” When fertilized, the pistillate turns down and corkscrews six inches into the ground. Each corkscrew, called a “peg,” grows one to four peanuts in the soil near the mother plant; each shell two of her shots at infinity. From the laboratory of a slave emerged a varied, balanced diet for the poor, stock foods, ink, paints, cosmetics, medicines ... Promise and purpose, the Ancestors' dream. “The Peanut Man,” we say, and laugh at him.

Wrapped in gold foil, in the search and shouting of Easter Sunday, it was the ball of the princess, it was Pharoah’s body sleeping in its golden case. At the foot of the picket fence, in grass lank with the morning rain, it was a Sunday school prize, silver for second place, gold for the triumphant little dome of Ararat, and my sister took me by the hand and led me out onto the wide, wet lawn and showed me to bend into the thick nests of grass, into the darkest green. Later I had to give it back, in exchange for a prize, though I would rather have kept the egg. What might have coiled inside it? Crocuses tight on their clock-springs, a bird who’d sing himself into an angel in the highest reaches of the garden, the morning’s flaming arrow? Any small thing can save you. Because the golden egg gleamed in my basket once, though my childhood became an immense sheet of darkening water I was Noah, and I was his ark, and there were two of every animal inside me.

The world’s a world of trouble, your mother must have told you that. Poison leaks into the basements and tedium into the schools. The oak is going the way of the elm in the upper Midwest—my cousin earns a living by taking the dead ones down. And Jason’s alive yet, the fair- haired child, his metal crib next to my daughter’s. Jason is one but last saw light five months ago and won’t see light again. · Leaf against leaf without malice or forethought, the manifold species of murmuring harm. No harm intended, there never is. The new inadequate software gets the reference librarian fired. The maintenance crew turns off power one weekend and Monday the lab is a morgue: fifty-four rabbits and seventeen months of research. Ignorance loves as ignorance does and always holds high office. · Jason had the misfortune to suffer misfortune the third of July. July’s the month of hospital ro- tations; on holiday weekends the venerable stay home. So when Jason lay blue and inert on the table and couldn’t be made to breathe for three-and-a- quarter hours, the staff were too green to let him go. The household gods have abandoned us to the gods of juris- prudence and suburban sprawl. The curve of new tarmac, the municipal pool, the sky at work on the pock-marked river, fatuous sky, the park where idling cars, mere yards from the slide and the swingset, deal beautiful oblivion in nickel bags: the admitting room and its stately drive, possessed of the town’s best view. · And what’s to become of the three-year-old brother? When Jason was found face down near the dogdish—it takes just a cupful of water to drown— his brother stood still in the corner and said he was hungry and said that it wasn’t his fault. No fault. The fault’s in nature, who will without system or explanation make permanent havoc of little mistakes. A natural mistake, the transient ill-will we define as the normal and trust to be inconsequent, by nature’s own abundance soon absorbed. · Oak wilt, it’s called, the new disease. Like any such contagion—hypocrisy in the conference room, flattery in the halls—it works its mischief mostly unremarked. The men on the links haven’t noticed yet. Their form is good. They’re par. The woman who’s prospered from hating ideas loves causes instead. A little shade, a little firewood. I know a stand of oak on which my father’s earthly joy depends. We’re slow to cut our losses.

The Pontalba Apartments in the View-Master and the cardboard cathedral as if trapped in the dream twenty years early, the whole a furious search as if for a reason. Still, it's sex that spoils it, isn't it? Jackson Square was the smallest sufficient landscape, but that was before, and now the gates are locked at sundown, and the smell of the river fails, falls ever backward. Some of us lived there, though: What shall we say who have knowledge carried to the heart?

1 Just as there were reeds along the riverbank, Just as there were clouds Above my head, my lute was lying beside me on the grass. I placed the little finger of my right hand on the soundboard, Just below the strings. Not the tip of the finger, the side. I curled the palm of my right hand towards me, Covering the strings, so that I played The bass note with the thumb, The next with the index, And the top note with the third. The sun retreated, the night turned cold. Rain began to fall, softly at first, Though surely rain had fallen here before, as rain falls everywhere. With my left hand, I positioned my thumb and index finger Opposite each other, bearing no weight, As if the neck of the lute were not there. 2 At this they all laughed. Then the Count began afresh: My lords, he said, I am not pleased with the young man if he is not also a musician, and if, besides his cunning upon the book, he have not skill in like manner on sundry instruments. There is no ease of labor more honest and more praiseworthy, especially at court, where many things are taken in hand to please women, whose tender breasts are soon pierced with melody. Then the Lord Gasper: I believe music, he said, together with other vanities, is mete for women, also for them that have the likeness of men, but not for them that be men indeed, who ought not with such delicacies womanize their minds and so bring themselves to dread death. — The First Booke of the Courtyer of Count Baldessar Castilio 3 For many years I lived apart, in happy oblivion. In retrospect, I understand I’d been a child, Though lacking comparisons I couldn’t have said so. I learned things, things no child, left to himself, could possibly know. My head, which had been empty, now was full. My head would grow larger. How could it not? At night, standing in the shower, I closed my eyes. The water trickled down my forehead To my nose, from my nose to my lips, my chin, then disappeared. But some of what stayed in my head Should not have been there. 4 Listen, said the reeds along the riverbank: the nymphs Are weeping for Daphnis. His mother embraces his body, railing against the stars. Nobody drives his cattle to the cool stream, no one could drink; The mountains echo with the beasts of the desert. Daphnis, it was you who yoked them to the chariot, Who led us in the dance, weaving Together vine leaves with reeds. The vine exceeds the tree on which it climbs. The grape exceeds the vine, The calf the herd, the corn the field. Now, where we planted barley, thistles grow. Where once were violets, hyacinths — nothing but weeds. Scatter the ground with flowers, shepherds, Set out two bowls, One of milk and one of oil. Then carve these lines from Virgil on his tomb: I was Daphnis in these woods.The stars knew my name.Beautiful the flock, more beautiful the shepherd.

Of all living monuments has the fewest facts attached to it, they slide right off its surface, no Lincoln lap for them to sit on and no horse to be astride. Here is what I know for sure: Was a gift from one city to another. A city cannot travel to another city, a city cannot visit any city but itself, and in its sadness it gives away a great door in the air. Well a city cannot except for Paris, who puts on a hat styled with pigeon wings and walks through the streets of another city and will not even see the sights, too full she is of the sights already. And within her walk her women, and the women of Paris looking like they just walked through an Arch... Or am I mixing it up I think I am with another famous female statue? Born in its shadow and shook-foil hot the facts slid off me also. I and the Arch we burned to the touch. “Don’t touch that Arch a boy we know got third-degree burns from touch- ing that Arch,” says my mother sitting for her statue. She is metal on a hilltop and so sad she isn’t a Cross. She was long ago given to us by Ireland. What an underhand gift for an elsewhere to give, a door that reminds you you can leave it. She raises her arm to brush my hair. Oh no female armpit lovelier than the armpit of the Arch.

In one who doesn’t speak the story petrifies, gets stumbled over, causes hurt. Then, says the man who should know about the past, then is a word you need to learn now. Then lived lives had has a name a body, sacrificial hands so god might help us. Feel with your hands and feet back along these countless steps and hear the incessant bloodrush, its dark red presence. That was what the man insisted, in so many words, pointing to the ornate temple corridor, an altar conjured at its vanishing point.

As soon as possible, I will confront the wren’s doings, rinse the white streaks from the porch bricks drawing lizards from their shade, the immediate smell of water too much for all of us. But first is lunch. The remains we’ll scatter over the driveway away from the bricks. Wrens come, crusts from our dishes make drama. Then history. What is possible in memory is disingenuous. Limestone, impressed with the archaic smile of bone and reptilian wrists, wishbones and feathers, describes. It cups the transitional form, naturally selecting one’s best side. There was the time you forgot your legs no longer could recall how to stand—then rose up straight and sang You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me Probably I’ve been thinking of that since August. The indelible wrens grate like shovels outside—exhumed, one voice rises from wilderness, echoes, settles, rests —then another, and, between them, the keep of an unerring quiet.

I was trying to love matter. I taped a sign over the mirror: You cannot hate matter and love form. It was a beautiful day, though cold. This was, for me, an extravagantly emotional gesture. .......your poem: tried, but could not. I taped a sign over the first sign: Cry , weep , thrash yourself , rend your garments — List of things to love: dirt, food, shells, human hair. ....... said tasteless excess. Then I rent the signs. AIAIAIAI cried the naked mirror.

The sudden thuck of landing The arrow made in the mark Of the center lifted and Loosened his skin. And so he Stood, hearing it like many Thrusting breaths driven to ground. He abandoned the long light Flight of arrows and the slow Parabolas bows dream of For the swifter song beyond Flesh. Song of moments. The earth Turned its molten balance. He stood hearing it again: The precise shudder the arrow Sought and returned to, flaming.