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After the last bulletins the windows darken And the whole city founders readily and deep, Sliding on all its pillows To the thronged Atlantis of personal sleep, And the wind rises. The wind rises and bowls The day’s litter of news in the alleys. Trash Tears itself on the railings, Soars and falls with a soft crash, Tumbles and soars again. Unruly flights Scamper the park, and taking a statue for dead Strike at the positive eyes, Batter and flap the stolid head And scratch the noble name. In empty lots Our journals spiral in a fierce noyade Of all we thought to think, Or caught in corners cramp and wad And twist our words. And some from gutters flail Their tatters at the tired patrolman’s feet, Like all that fisted snow That cried beside his long retreat Damn you! damn you! to the emperor’s horse’s heels. Oh none too soon through the air white and dry Will the clear announcer’s voice Beat like a dove, and you and I From the heart’s anarch and responsible town Return by subway-mouth to life again, Bearing the morning papers, And cross the park where saintlike men, White and absorbed, with stick and bag remove The litter of the night, and footsteps rouse With confident morning sound The songbirds in the public boughs.

I carved upon my desk unsayables. He drank until he vomited on himself. Eavesdropping, the others resisted sleep. The house knew the pain of sun on lacquered floorboards. I carved it with the tips of scissors. A door creaked; he hung his head into the room. Please, the others cannot sleep. The shingles twitched like skin beneath moonlight. I spent the afternoon at a movie theater. He staggered through brush toward a pay phone. The others continued searching the streets for him. The house held the moon above it, it was that imperial. I recall the room was empty when I came back in. He was arrested at the Quik-Trip while calling collect. Frantic, the others circled the block again. The house was ghost-white, older than the dead. I needle-pointed for 72 hours straight. He claimed the whole situation humiliated him. Relieved, the others refrained from asking him what jail was like. The house was swan to field, tiger to sea. I lay in bed by the time the others came home. He couldn't recall putting on the orange jumpsuit. The others asked if I'd seen him around. The house shuddered,No-o-o-o. The house winced, winked its blinds. The house whispered I should stay inside. The others flew out the doors and into their cars. The others slammed their cars into deer and cried. He was more humiliated than he'd ever been. He looked more or less the same, though his eyes were ringed. The others hid in the basement. He climbed the stairs and presented a ring. The house swung its windows wide to ice. He banged his nails blue, pinned his tongue to his tie. He packed himself in a box, sent it to regions far off. The others pressed their ears to the pipes. The house wore its flames like a hat. The house called a radio talk-show. We drank all night, laughed all night, the night he left. I shook in its mouth till the house drank me up.

The curtain parts one last time and the ones who killed and were killed, who loved inordinately, who went berserk, were flayed alive, descended to Hades, raged, wept, schemed— victims and victimizers alike— smile and nod and graciously bow. So glad it's finally over, they stride off suddenly a bit ridiculous in their overwrought costumes. And the crowd—still dark, like God beyond the footlights of the world— rises to its feet and roars like the sea.

Sugar dries on paper plates. The cake’s decimated and barely touched. What to do with the balloons? A few float listlessly, unattached, still bearing like bandages the tape that bore them to the wall. They’ve gone dull, rubber tips darkening to a bottle’s pinch. It’s too late, or too early. There are too many on the floor, stirred up as I stir. In the end, I cut them, urge a blade into the inch between knot and blossom. Slow deflation. It reveals what they are: sacs of plastic, stale with air. I’ve seen this before, in the newspaper picture of Nefertiti, bound in the antechamber of a tomb, cast out of favor, her body, barely wrapped. How they know her: by the queenly jaw, age of limbs and teeth. Also, by the broken mouth, smashed by priests so she cannot eat, cannot breathe in the afterlife.

She looked nearly the same But when I hugged her There was substantially more To her—no doubt as with me. She fibbed as I did at the edge Of curb under the streetlight As spiders dropped like tiny Parachutes—they were difficult To see. On the periphery Of good luck, I thought, Revisiting her quirky habits And expressions, what I eventually Found so bothersome. Except When I glanced at my watch I discovered I was trembling Like a small-time embezzler. I see, she said, you must have An appointment. The driveways And hedges funneling back Into darkness, into someone else's Childhood, where speech was An obstacle. Wild turkeys Approaching across the lawn. Oh no, I said, I'm just so pleased To see you. But that didn't Make sense either. She cocked Her head, a woman with grown Twins and three conniving husbands. Even my toes felt damp. I remember, She said, when you'd lay your head On my lap, I'd stroke your hair— I didn't recall. Though I thought That would be a good idea now. But I'm married, I said. I own My own business. It would have Been helpful if I'd planned Some banter. I'm a high school Principal, she told me, I don't put up with horseshit From anyone. I brushed the arm Of her jacket—she merely stared. A door slammed. A grown idiot Drooled in an attic somewhere down The lane. I had another image As well, one that held an odor Of patchouli oil. As she stepped Forward without caution, placed a hand On my neck. Take me, she insisted, To those rivets of flame following Wire—because this is it, You'll never have another Hour. I immediately felt Calmer...

Fear me, virgin whosoever Taking pride from love exempt, Fear me, slighted. Never, never Brave me, nor my fury tempt: Downy wings, but wroth they beat Tempest even in reason's seat.

By the time he’d hit eighty, he was something out of Ovid, his long beak thin and hooked,

After the war perhaps I'll sit again Out on the terrace where I sat with you, And see the changeless sky and hills beat blue And live an afternoon of summer through. I shall remember then, and sad at heart For the lost day of happiness we knew, Wish only that some other man were you And spoke my name as once you used to do.

For Joseph Flum When he got to the farmhouse, he rifled through the cabinets, drawers, and cupboards, and his buddies did too. The place was abandoned, or so he thought, and his buddies did too. He tried to talk to people in town, and his buddies did too, but he was the only one whose Yiddish made it across into German. They took his meaning. He, in the farmhouse, took a camera and a gun, but his buddies, who knows. About the gun, it’s also hard to say, but after the war he took up photography, why not, and shot beautiful women for years. Got pretty good at it, and how. Won prizes and engraved plates, put them in a drawer, forgot the war, forgot his buddies, forgot the women, forgot the drawer.

MAY 3, 1863 When Clifford wasn’t back to camp by nine, I went to look among the fields of dead before we lost him to a common grave. But I kept tripping over living men and had to stop and carry them to help or carry them until they died, which happened more than once upon my back. And I got angry with those men because they kept me from my search and I was out still stumbling through the churned-up earth at dawn, stopping to stare into each corpse’s face, and all the while I was writing in my head the letter I would have to send our father, saying Clifford was lost and I had lost him. I found him bent above a dying squirrel while trying to revive the little thing. A battlefield is full of trash like that — dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform. Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live. Cliff knew it couldn’t live without a jaw. When in relief I called his name, he stared, jumped back, and hissed at me like a startled cat. I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,” as you might talk to calm a skittery mare, and then I helped him kill and bury all the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field. It seemed a game we might have played as boys. We didn’t bury them all at once, with lime, the way they do on burial detail, but scooped a dozen, tiny, separate graves. When we were done he fell across the graves and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons. His chest was large — it covered most of them. I wiped his tears and stroked his matted hair, and as I hugged him to my chest I saw he’d wet his pants. We called it Yankee tea.