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5-2001 (as on TV) Welcome to this special edition double cortege for Galbraith, Kenneth— Friedman, Milton— ssstately cortege... efffusively-shiny like your kids teeth— ...such éclaircissement on this beautiful morning lustrum (kids, that’s Latin, we mean to say “wow”) ...directly behind the caskets—is that —it’s the Macy’s Rat (in mid-air)...neat, real neat... in front the lead-coated horses don’t seem to mind the officers’ droppings... is that a gigantic molar, with worms popping out? —such a variety of colors! ...look, some Teamsters are in a tussle with some scab teletubby over on 23rd St. and Madison ...ok, now, now they’re under arrest... if you look carefully you’ll see there’s two pre-funeral exercises for Fukuyama, Francis— Soros, George— on 24th —not, not as stately... a delegation of mainstream poets! and behind them, this year’s NPR security-clearance float!...ooh... ya, they’re rather new at this but...wait— there’s a lone guerrilla girl running through the crowd now she’s she’s managed to get the Cultural Studies delegation to strip and dress up as squeegee-bearing babushkas it looks like ...it’s 20 degrees so, that’s rather—ok, she’s, she’s under arrest now... ...those are neat, those little plastic thingies, aren’t they?... The Bill Gates (My Charter) High School Marching Band! The Steve Case (My Charter) High School Marching Band! behind them the post ’89, post-historical acrobat academics on mini-lawnmowers... that’s smart... The Yucky’s! The Yucky’s, yeah, they’re an interesting group... they do things like suppress that Sidney Poitier is the best American actor ever ...oh look, the Fahd ibn Abdel Aziz al-Saúd float ...the F14’s behind him are real ...now,that’s smart! ...I think he just waved at me ...who’s that man with the Monocle grabbing his— that’s Mister Modernist! he’s been a regular at these events for over 90 years now ...Saga of The Blank Page float a real favorite... ooh, he just dropped his—wait a babushka—her, her boot’s— crkkkk... oh, that’s, that’s not good...but —did you know that these are the first 100% soy caskets ever made? some people have actually run up to nibble at them... kids, if you’re watching this... make sure you never think of any other social arrangement other than one that Militarily Has To Dominate Three Quarter of The World

I have to thank God I'm a woman, For in these ordered days a woman only Is free to be very hungry, very lonely. It is sad for Feminism, but still clear That man, more often than woman, is pioneer. If I would confide a new thought, First to a man must it be brought. Now, for our sins, it is my bitter fate That such a man wills soon to be my mate, And so of friendship is quick end: When I have gained a love I lose a friend. It is well within the order of things That man should listen when his mate sings; But the true male never yet walked Who liked to listen when his mate talked. I would be married to a full man, As would all women since the world began; But from a wealth of living I have proved I must be silent, if I would be loved. Now of my silence I have much wealth, I have to do my thinking all by stealth. My thoughts may never see the day; My mind is like a catacomb where early Christians pray. And of my silence I have much pain, But of these pangs I have great gain; For I must take to drugs or drink, Or I must write the things I think. If my sex would let me speak, I would be very lazy and most weak; I should speak only, and the things I spoke Would fill the air awhile, and clear like smoke. The things I think now I write down, And some day I will show them to the Town. When I am sad I make thought clear; I can re-read it all next year. I have to thank God I'm a woman, For in these ordered days a woman only Is free to be very hungry, very lonely.

When first thou didst entice to thee my heart, I thought the service brave; So many joys I writ down for my part, Besides what I might have Out of my stock of natural delights, Augmented with thy gracious benefits. I looked on thy furniture so fine, And made it fine to me; Thy glorious household-stuff did me entwine, And 'tice me unto thee. Such stars I counted mine: both heav'n and earth; Paid me my wages in a world of mirth. What pleasures could I want, whose King I serv'd, Where joys my fellows were? Thus argu'd into hopes, my thoughts reserv'd No place for grief or fear. Therefore my sudden soul caught at the place, And made her youth and fierceness seek thy face. At first thou gav'st me milk and sweetnesses; I had my wish and way; My days were straw'd with flow'rs and happiness; There was no month but May. But with my years sorrow did twist and grow, And made a party unawares for woe. My flesh began unto my soul in pain, "Sicknesses cleave my bones; Consuming agues dwell in ev'ry vein, And tune my breath to groans." Sorrow was all my soul; I scarce believ'd, Till grief did tell me roundly, that I liv'd. When I got health, thou took'st away my life, And more, for my friends die; My mirth and edge was lost, a blunted knife Was of more use than I. Thus thin and lean without a fence or friend, I was blown through with ev'ry storm and wind. Whereas my birth and spirit rather took The way that takes the town; Thou didst betray me to a ling'ring book, And wrap me in a gown. I was entangled in the world of strife, Before I had the power to change my life. Yet, for I threaten'd oft the siege to raise, Not simp'ring all mine age, Thou often didst with academic praise Melt and dissolve my rage. I took thy sweet'ned pill, till I came where I could not go away, nor persevere. Yet lest perchance I should too happy be In my unhappiness, Turning my purge to food, thou throwest me Into more sicknesses. Thus doth thy power cross-bias me, not making Thine own gift good, yet me from my ways taking. Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me None of my books will show; I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree, For sure then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust Her household to me, and I should be just. Yet, though thou troublest me, I must be meek; In weakness must be stout; Well, I will change the service, and go seek Some other master out. Ah my dear God! though I am clean forgot, Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.

Love not too much. But how, When thou hast made me such, And dost thy gifts bestow, How can I love too much? Though I must fear to lose, And drown my joy in care, With all its thorns I choose The path of love and prayer. Though thou, I know not why, Didst kill my childish trust, That breach with toil did I Repair, because I must: And spite of frighting schemes, With which the fiends of Hell Blaspheme thee in my dreams, So far I have hoped well. But what the heavenly key, What marvel in me wrought Shall quite exculpate thee, I have no shadow of thought. What am I that complain? The love, from which began My question sad and vain, Justifies thee to man.

In the groves of Africa from their natural wonder the wildebeest, zebra, the okapi, the elephant, have enterd the marvelous. No greater marvelous know I than the mind’s natural jungle. The wives of the Congo distil there their red and the husbands hunt lion with spear and paint Death-spore on their shields, wear his teeth, claws and hair on ordinary occasions. There the Swahili open his doors, let loose thru the trees the tides of Death’s sound and distil from their leaves the terrible red. He is the consort of dreams I have seen, heard in the orchestral dark like the barking of dogs. Death is the dog-headed man zebra striped and surrounded by silence who walks like a lion, who is black. It was his voice crying come back, that Virginia Woolf heard, turnd her fine skull, hounded and haunted, stopt, pointed into the scent where I see her in willows, in fog, at the river of sound in the trees. I see her prepare there to enter Death’s mountains like a white Afghan hound pass into the forest, closed after, let loose in the leaves with more grace than a hound and more wonder there even with flowers wound in her hair, allowing herself like Ophelia a last pastoral gesture of love toward the world. And I see all our tortures absolved in the fog, dispersed in Death’s forests, forgotten. I see all this gentleness like a hound in the water float upward and outward beyond my dark hand. I am waiting this winter for the more complete black-out, for the negro armies in the eucalyptus, for the cities laid open and the cold in the love-light, for hounds women and birds to go back to their forests and leave us our solitude. .   .   . Negroes, negroes, all those princes, holding cups of rhinoceros bone, make magic with my blood. Where beautiful Marijuana towers taller than the eucalyptus, turns within the lips of night and falls, falls downward, where as giant Kings we gathered and devourd her burning hands and feet, O Moonbar thee and Clarinet! those talismans that quickened in their sheltering leaves like thieves, those Negroes, all those princes holding to their mouths like Death the cups of rhino bone, were there to burn my hands and feet, divine the limit of the bone and with their magic tie and twist me like a rope. I know no other continent of Africa more dark than this dark continent of my breast. And when we are deserted there, when the rustling electric has passt thru the air, once more we begin in the blind and blood throat the African catches; and Desdemona, Desdemona like a demon wails within our bodies, warns against this towering Moor of self and then laments her passing from him. And I cry, Hear! Hear in the coild and secretive ear the drums that I hear beat. The Negroes, all those princes holding cups of bone and horn, are there in halls of blood that I call forests, in the dark and shining caverns where beats heart and pulses brain, in jungles of my body, there Othello moves, striped black and white, the dog-faced fear. Moves I, I, I, whom I have seen as black as Orpheus, pursued deliriously his sound and drownd in hunger’s tone, the deepest wilderness. Then it was I, Death singing, who bewildered the forest. I thot him my lover like a hound of great purity disturbing the shadow and flesh of the jungle. This was the beginning of the ending year. From all of the empty the tortured appear, and the bird-faced children crawl out of their fathers and into that never filld pocket, the no longer asking but silent, seeing nowhere the final sleep. The halls of Africa we seek in dreams as barriers of dream against the deep, and seas disturbd turn back upon their tides into the rooms deserted at the roots of love. There is no end. And how sad then is even the Congo. How the tired sirens come up from the water, not to be toucht but to lie on the rocks of the thunder. How sad then is even the marvelous!

After Lauren Halsey and Mike Demps

Over treasure and land some texts will say it had Little to do with slavery or the newly Discovered yellow planet Few men watched the glaciers recede From shuttles they had built During the hemorrhage years When they’d gathered all the genes down from the ledges I’ll be a fig or a sycamore tree Or without hands By then doctors and poets Would have found a cure for prayer • Or have you shoved the door shut In the face of the dark? Have you body and light the trap Of retribution doing unto you What it does to others? You protest In the streets and papers and I leave For a faraway land Where with pill and scalpel And a distant reckoning If he should lick his lips Or clench his fist I shall find his second left toe Infected puffy From a bump I’ll lance it and squeeze Out the pus and offer Him an antibiotic I can’t refuse therefore I am • The first time I saw you it was hot I was fed up The second time your wife gave birth to a macerated boy I had nothing to tell you About letting go of the dying In the morning you were gone Had carried your father back to your house His cracked skull I didn’t know that was your wife When I raised my voice To those who were praying From behind the wall to keep it down I was trying to listen to your baby’s heartbeat With a gadget a century old • Anemic From so much loss giving birth If you give blood in the desert you won’t Get it back not your iron pills or magic hat I put your thin Hemoglobin up to the light and called out To the donors Donors If you want to know your blood type And it’s a match You must donate Few came some indifferent to my condition Not having heard of it And willing anyhow • And the world is south The night a bandit with gasoline And I’m your dancing lizard mirth I put my one arm up And bring my one foot down on a hot zinc top The nearest hospital was the dawn She didn’t know her daughter on her back was The entry wound and she the exit She ran a brothel so The officer said Where the rebels came and went And ran into the government boys Her girl’s femur the size of the bullet • He was from the other side rumors Had a bullet through his left arm Or had it bitten off by a camel A camel elephant of the desert never forgets what you are If you aren’t kind to it When I met him his bladder was the size Of a watermelon his prostate a cantaloupe You cannot catheterize A man forever Every hour on the hour his left arm stump Hanging his good arm holding His penis his buttocks in deep squeeze A charge from the rear without spillage This poor murderous thief desperately single- Handedly began slapping his own ass As if he were dashing a stallion in a raid On some unarmed village • The mind in the field The brine in the field Whether I Is a diphthong codependent on What isn’t there to stay in the field The good you act is equal To the good you doubt Most have lost many You are either prosperous Or veteran in the field • A mother offers not necessarily Sells her one-eyed son For an education if you’ll bring him back And stone dust for one With congenital illness And little boy with malaria Same old gas Money mixed with blood Transfusion the doctor’s perfect record broken Nobility of taking A life you Who must walk to and from your house The jeep’s upkeep The donkey-cart ambulance • One boot left behind The one-boot photo I wanted On a book military black the quad a clinic’s Special Forces spun By his dangling heels from The pickup truck rushed To a central town altered combative With two scalp lacerations and blood In his auditory canal I was a lover of loss I tossed The boot in the capital of suffering

The man I love most says one day he will take a ballpoint pen and connect the stars across this freckled scoop of chest and milky way. We’ll cross the slope of pale belly and name the new constellation after a god who shows people all the places they might shine.

Because I have come to the fence at night, the horses arrive also from their ancient stable. They let me stroke their long faces, and I note in the light of the now-merging moon how they, a Morgan and a Quarter, have been by shake-guttered raindrops spotted around their rumps and thus made Appaloosas, the ancestral horses of this place. Maybe because it is night, they are nervous, or maybe because they too sense what they have become, they seem to be waiting for me to say something to whatever ancient spirits might still abide here, that they might awaken from this strange dream, in which there are fences and stables and a man who doesn’t know a single word they understand.

A lapwing somersaults spring flips over winter and back. After a fast walk up long hills, my limbs the engine of  thought, where burn bubbles into beck and clough to gill, beneath a sandstone cliff  balanced on a bed of shale and held from hurtling by Scots pine that brush a scrubby sky with cloud snow scutters, I found a place to sit by snapping watta smacking rocks and wondered — how would it be for you? And so, alone, un-alone even, in my anger, bring you here.