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To pass through astonishment and know much too late. And because habit makes us strange, I find myself Searching on a landscape that generates questions Beyond its ability to solve. That dark post Out there might be this poem standing as you would — Lead in the 4th grade play — under theater lights And your shadows that petal around you. And what Should be most memorable isn’t. So I recall Those prolonged moments of silence, incongruous And revealing as metaphor, most frequently. For instance: waiting at the bus stop in Pai in A midmorning the hue of the roadside guardrails That dot the cliff’s side like Morse code. Before leaving With trees (those felled, ones half-painted white, the burnt trunks ...    ) That passed by like the so many phenomena Of our days blurred together into a motion, At times, convincing as a nickelodeon’s, I waited under the thatched roof of the station With other travelers. With each in our common Solitude risen around like that Haydn piece In the tunnel I descended into on my Way out onto Broadway from the 1 train some months Ago, it seemed of Hopper. Star fruit on the ground Discolored, withering, blighted. Three of the town’s Strays hobbled by before midday’s heat stalled the town Like some lost Stephano, Trinculo, and their lamed, Dark sycophant — at least that’s what they were for me. It wasn’t comfort, never comfort, but something else. And when each moment with expectations for more Than it can hold leads to the next, and soon — as then — Expectation fills up the day as does your breath A balloon, the day floats with such care and strange hours. And both pleasure and pain are motions of the soul... Plato wrote — poetry’s banisher, beauty’s guard. 2 My hands grow differently used. While one hand thumbs Pages, the other hand steadies open the book. It’s the other hand that rests on the desk, forearm Paralleled to the table’s edge, all the fingers Except the thumb holding the blank field. One hand’s mole A gnat flattened between pinky and ring finger; The other hand’s palm-side, below the skin enough It’s likely a splinter left for years. Just one hand Fits my Discman, plugged in while watching those around (No news-as-white-noise here to occupy my sight): Kids who bus to school hours away toothpicking Slivers of chili-dappled mango slices in; A triple-sweatered lady palming back her hair In the thick Thai pre-dawn June; the one foreigner Other than us, earphone couched; and her shape, dozed slack, Coat-blanketed, neck against my side. One hand rests. Half a day ago, under a mosquito net, Flush with the desk fan sitting on the rattan floor, One hand kept on the steady act of beckoning Behind the tongue-swelled clit, uncreasing the ridged roof, Almost like the mouth’s roof as it slopes down toward teeth, Like rubbing the dampened cave wall, finger-darkened, As the guide turns his back to us. The other hand Traced its crook — that delta-creased pad set between thumb And fingers, hand’s most fleshy zone — on the torso. The other hand then stilled her hip, mosquito net, Weighted, walling out stitches of ants, from its hook A viscous drape like that through one hand’s two fingers. Oddly, only one hand drums along (the CD: Converge,Jane Doe) as the crowd would rupture outward Into a circle pit — a vortex in reverse — If this were a concert. The other hand just bides Its time. Milton’s clumsy other hand, God’s other Hand that Lessing chose, and that Spaniard’s other hand Riddled useless at Lepanto, a bullet lodged Into that scurvied poet’s chest, the other hand Remembers and betrays. The other hand cries out, Which was Keats’s living one? Neither hand scarred yet, Even after thumb-knuckle tempted a sander In shop class, impulse from imagining too much. One hand’s cushion bears the pencil (my friend whose tasks Are split between his hands — “I eat with my left hand, Punch with the other” — says we whack off with the hand We write). Each hand on different shaded denim thighs, The unclipped nails crude halos of sun-blocking hills. One hand lets forth words; the other hand holds it back. 3 Chased by a three-legged dog to the temple stairs, Past all the fallen star fruit (the veined tips the last To wither, the through-light flesh sun- and bug-eaten), We crossed paths with a one-legged man — wordless sounds, And that permanent wild gaze — crutching down the stairs (Four hundred!) as we stopped to catch a break mid-flight. Our breath would last us a run-through of the temple, And, in the first hallway — him?!, his phatic calls, tics, And unwilled smile facing the morning that just passed, The sun no longer in front of his propped body, But above it, the valley overabundant With the real light that stole our day. The fog too lifted Against my sight. We paused. Having just climbed the hill, We agreed to leave our shoes on despite sandals Stationed on the stoop, and then we turned towards that hall. “Let’s go,” he ends, befriended, prayer Phaedrus-empty. — The driver gases the bus off the parking brakes To idle back out the station; the attendants Scoop up the wood wedges and clatter the door shut; The passengers all shift. In the chapter among The deformed and footless, Zhuangzi ends, arguing For the greatest of men, a man void of feelings: “The Way gave him a face, Heaven gave him a form, Can’t you call him a man?” Yet there are things I love: The sun, you, travel. And back again, the thick fog Parts us from the obliterating Turner sun. Pretty soon, come day, the motorbikes The Rough Guide Says all tourists should try will buzz by those three dogs, All lethargic, the largest too tired to dry-hump, His red tip unsheathing (there’s no neutering here), The black one, bald in spots, wouldn’t even fight it off, The mottled one coiled back like the dog that badgers Bosch’s wayfarer, bandaged, poor bastard, with his gnarled stick, Not looking at us, but rather caught looking back, And above his head a doorway — no, the gallows? — The same one Brueghel’s final peasants romped beneath? My turn now to sleep. I can dab off from my jeans Your drool just reaching my thigh as you do, with care, From our sheets when — yet that stuff, all that stuff of ours Still spots our many beds with different aged salt-rings, Each gasp less a sound than a failure at silence. Before us another strange town, while for others School, home, maybe work, a field, someplace normal, there, Someplace beyond sight from its roadside stop. Abroad A month, toward a year in another country, Anne — Anacrusis: these days I’m lost in, reminded Of my presence as if catching a stranger’s wave To the yet-to-be-seen man behind you as yours. — traveled 2005 / written 2007–2008

the noun A disease of the peach tree —a fungus distorts leaves. The first time I was taken to see him I was five or six. A vesicle on the skin containing serum, caused by friction, a burn, or other injury. He lived on Alabama Street next to Saint Peter’s and wore a white t-shirt, starched and snug. A similar swelling with fluid or air on the surface of a plant, or metal after cooling or the sunless area between one’s toes after a very long walk. Don’t ask me how it is I ended up holding it. An outer covering fitted to a vessel to protect against torpedoes, mines, or to improve stability. My guess is that he brought it out to show me thinking, perhaps, I had never seen one up close, let alone felt the blunt weight of one in my hands. A rounded compartment protruding from the body of a plane. What came next: no image but sensation of its hammer (my inexpert manipulation) digging into but not breaking skin—the spot at the base of my thumb balloons, slowly filling with fluid… In Spanish: ampolla —an Ampul of chrystal in the Middle Ages could be a relic containing the blood of someone holy. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t loaded.

Hunched in the bath, four ibuprofen gulped too late to dull the muscle cramping

Blow, northerne wynd, Send thou me my suetyng! Blow, northerne wynd, Blou, blou, blou! Ichot a burde in boure bryht, That fully semly is on syht, Menskful maiden of myht, Feir ant fre to fonde; In al this wurhliche won, A burde of blod and of bon Never yete y nuste non Lussomore in londe. With lokkes lefliche and longe, With frount and face feir to fonge, With murthes monie mote heo monge, That brid so breme in boure; With lossom eye, grete ant gode, With browen blysfol under hode; He that reste him on the rode That leflich lyf honoure! Hire lure lumes liht Ase a launterne a nyht, Hire bleo blykyeth so bryht: So feyr heo is ant fyn! A suetly suyre heo hath to holde, With armes, shuldre, ase mon wolde, Ant fyngres feyre forte folde, God wolde hue were myn! Middel heo hath menskful smal; Hire loveliche chere as cristal; Theyes, legges, fet, ant al, Ywraht is of the beste. A lussum ledy lasteles That sweting is, and ever wes; A betere burde never nes Yheryed with the heste. Heo is dereworthe in day, Graciouse, stout, and gay, Gentil, jolyf so the jay, Worhliche when heo waketh. Maiden murgest of mouth; Bi est, bi west, by north and south, Thér nis fithele ne crouth That such murthes maketh. Heo is coral of godnesse, Heo is rubie of ryhtfulnesse, Heo is cristal of clannesse, Ant baner of bealté; Heo is lilie of largesse, Heo is paruenke of prouesse, Heo is solsecle of suetnesse, Ant ledy of lealté. For hire love y carke ant care, For hire love y droupne ant dare, For hire love my blisse is bare, Ant al ich waxe won; For hire love in slep y slake, For hire love al nyht ich wake, For hire love mournynge y make More then eny mon.

In placid hours well-pleased we dream Of many a brave unbodied scheme. But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt—a wind to freeze; Sad patience—joyous energies; Humility—yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity—reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart, To wrestle with the angel—Art.

for my sisters Because we did not have threads of turquoise, silver, and gold, we could not sew a sun nor sky. And our hands became balls of fire. And our arms spread open like wings. Because we had no chalk or pastels, no toad, forest, or morning-grass slats of paper, we had no colour for creatures. So we squatted and sprang, squatted and sprang. Four young girls, plaits heavy on our backs, our feet were beating drums, drawing rhythms from the floor; our mouths became woodwinds; our tongues touched teeth and were reeds.

back 90 suns to a run through the ferns I remain the eclipse of each sound as I push through the soil to the icons that run no more. my stutters explode through the shade of the twilight as crows destroy the machine → robots drone in the infinite zero, where we dwell in the pull of the Sea. the moon shaves our brain onto the plate and layers the first person far before the book to form the semblance we share in the animals who dwell in the exterior layer of our souls beyond the skin. that is where suffering plants and holds its fractal flower as hope delivers its other linked body made of the sand and the wind. the flora and fauna and others of the earth, of each person extend their net of the mind to reduce the numerical coldness of the sound. but where do the multiple hearts plant themselves in the exterior organs and the bodies of the stones? and of time cut down to the green and the stop of the harvest where the singular falls, how does it start? and where does it go?

As at the far edge of circling the country, facing suddenly the other ocean, the boundless edge of what I had wanted to know, I stepped into my answers’ shadow ocean, the tightening curl of the corners of outdated old paperbacks, breakers, a crumble surf of tiny dry triangles around my ankles sinking in my stand taken that the horizon written by the spin of my compass is that this is is not enough a point to turn around on, is like a skin that falls short of edge as a rug, that covers a no longer natural spot, no longer existent to live on from, the map of my person come to the end of, but not done. That country crossed was what I could imagine, and that little spit of answer is the shadow— not the ocean which casts it— that I step next into to be cleansed of question. But not of seeking …it as if simplified for the seeking, come to its end at this body.

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handles to say or ask a word, About the weather, next about the war. Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed Once more. The blizzard felled the elm whose crest I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole, The ploughman said. “When will they take it away?” “When the war’s over.” So the talk began— One minute and an interval of ten, A minute more and the same interval. “Have you been out?” “No.” “And don’t want to, perhaps?” “If I could only come back again, I should. I could spare an arm. I shouldn’t want to lose A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so, I should want nothing more. . . . Have many gone From here?” “Yes.” “Many lost?” “Yes, a good few. Only two teams work on the farm this year. One of my mates is dead. The second day In France they killed him. It was back in March, The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.” “And I should not have sat here. Everything Would have been different. For it would have been Another world.” “Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good.” Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

Mail-day, and over the world in a thousand drag-nets The bundles of letters are dumped on the docks and beaches, And all that is dear to the personal conscious reaches Around us again like filings around iron magnets, And war stands aside for an hour and looks at our faces Of total absorption that seem to have lost their places. O demobilized for a moment, a world is made human, Returns to a time that is neither the present or then, But a garland of clippings and wishes of who-knows-when, A time of its own creation, a thing of acumen That keeps us, like movies, alive with a purpose, aside From the play-acting truth of the newsreel in which we have died. And aside from the candy and pictures and books we receive, As if we were patients whose speedy recovery were certain, There is proof of the End and the lights and the bow at the curtain, After which we shall smile at each other and get up to leave. Aside from the play in the play there is all that is fact, These letters, the battle in progress, the place of the act. And the optimal joy of the conflict, the tears of the ads May move us or not, and the movies at night in the palms May recall us or not to the kiss, and on Sunday the psalms May remind us of Sunday or not, but aside from the lads Who arrive like our letters still fresh from the kiss and the tear, There are mouths that are dusty and eyes that are wider than fear. Say no more of the dead than a prayer, say no more of the land Where the body is laid in the coral than that it is far; Take your finger away from the map of wherever-we-are, For we lie in the map of the chart of your elderly hand; Do not hasten the future; in agony too there is time For the growth of the rose of the spirit astir in the slime. For aside from ourselves as we are there is nothing alive Except as it keeps us alive, not tomorrow but now, Our mail-day, today of the blood of the sweat of our brow, The year of our war to the end. When and where we arrive Is no matter, but how is the question we urgently need, How to love and to hate, how to die, how to write and to read.