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The turtle carries his house on his back. He is both the house and the person of that house. But actually, under the shell is a little room where the true turtle, wearing long underwear, sits at a little table. At one end of the room a series of levers sticks out of slots in the floor, like the controls of a steam shovel. It is with these that the turtle controls the legs of his house. Most of the time the turtle sits under the sloping ceiling of his turtle room reading catalogues at the little table where a candle burns. He leans on one elbow, and then the other. He crosses one leg, and then the other. Finally he yawns and buries his head in his arms and sleeps. If he feels a child picking up his house he quickly douses the candle and runs to the control levers and activates the legs of his house and tries to escape. If he cannot escape he retracts the legs and withdraws the so-called head and waits. He knows that children are careless, and that there will come a time when he will be free to move his house to some secluded place, where he will relight his candle, take out his catalogues and read until at last he yawns. Then he’ll bury his head in his arms and sleep....That is, until another child picks up his house....

When trying to catch a horse it helps if you look away. Eye contact just pisses them off. But you can’t fake looking away, horses know when you are doing this. You have to really look away. Some horsemen never come out of  this.

They came as Congo, Guinea, & Angola, feet tuned to rhythms of a thumb piano. They came to work fields of barley & flax, livestock, stone & slab, brick & mortar, to make wooden barrels, some going from slave to servant & half-freeman. They built tongue & groove— wedged into their place in New Amsterdam. Decades of seasons changed the city from Dutch to York, & dream-footed hard work rattled their bones. They danced Ashanti. They lived & died. Shrouded in cloth, in cedar & pine coffins, Trinity Church owned them in six & a half acres of sloping soil. Before speculators arrived grass & weeds overtook what was most easily forgotten, & tannery shops drained there. Did descendants & newcomers shoulder rock & heave loose gravel into the landfill before building crews came, their guitars & harmonicas chasing away ghosts at lunch break? Soon, footsteps of lower Manhattan strutted overhead, back & forth between old denials & new arrivals, going from major to minor pieties, always on the go. The click of heels the tap of a drum awaking the dead.

Ουδέν μονιμότερον του προσωρινού We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query— Just for a couple of years, we said, a dozen years back. Nothing is more permanent than the temporary. We dine sitting on folding chairs—they were cheap but cheery. We’ve taped the broken window pane. tv ’s still out of whack. We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query. When we crossed the water, we only brought what we could carry, But there are always boxes that you never do unpack. Nothing is more permanent than the temporary. Sometimes when I’m feeling weepy, you propose a theory: Nostalgia and tear gas have the same acrid smack. We’re here for the time being, I answer to the query— We stash bones in the closet when we don’t have time to bury, Stuff receipts in envelopes, file papers in a stack. Nothing is more permanent than the temporary. Twelve years now and we’re still eating off the ordinary: We left our wedding china behind, afraid that it might crack. We’re here for the time being, we answer to the query, But nothing is more permanent than the temporary.

I once carried my mollusk tune All the way to the lottery of gods. Rain was the old funeral choir That keened of a hemisphere Moored under lampwings. Clouds never left. I knew The lights would shine clearer If I closed my eyes, just as I knew the Pacific would teach Me to sleep before tying my Name to the flaming. Here I Am now at the end of amethyst, Drizzling another lost sunrise Inside the quilt of your hand.

To lie in your child’s bed when she is gone Is calming as anything I know. To fall Asleep, her books arranged above your head, Is to admit that you have never been So tired, so enchanted by the spell Of your grown body. To feel small instead Of blocking out the light, to feel alone, Not knowing what you should or shouldn’t feel, Is to find out, no matter what you’ve said About the cramped escapes and obstacles You plan and face and have to call the world, That there remain these places, occupied By children, yours if lucky, like the girl Who finds you here and lies down by your side.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’? The Feet, mechanical, go round – A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

They said I got away in a boat And humbled me at the inquiry. I tell you I sank as far that night as any Hero. As I sat shivering on the dark water I turned to ice to hear my costly Life go thundering down in a pandemonium of Prams, pianos, sideboards, winches, Boilers bursting and shredded ragtime. Now I hide In a lonely house behind the sea Where the tide leaves broken toys and hatboxes Silently at my door. The showers of April, flowers of May mean nothing to me, nor the Late light of June, when my gardener Describes to strangers how the old man stays in bed On seaward mornings after nights of Wind, takes his cocaine and will see no one. Then it is I drown again with all those dim Lost faces I never understood, my poor soul Screams out in the starlight, heart Breaks loose and rolls down like a stone. Include me in your lamentations.

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves And against the morning’s white The shivering birds beneath the eaves Have sheltered for the night, We’ll turn our faces southward, love, Toward the summer isle Where bamboos spire the shafted grove And wide-mouthed orchids smile. And we will seek the quiet hill Where towers the cotton tree, And leaps the laughing crystal rill, And works the droning bee. And we will build a cottage there Beside an open glade, With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near, And ferns that never fade.

You take the cats out with you, shut the door: I have the whole wide bed, all the covers to fall back asleep in, while you cut up and sugar the strawberries, grind the coffee, leave the radio off so I won't be disturbed. The room is still dark, rain forecast for the entire day, other people's family picnics cancelled, barbecues moved into basements, parades rerouted to avoid flooded viaducts, the iris losing petals beside newly cleaned graves, their mason jars spilt into the saturated ground. But here is my holiday, this drift back beneath thought while I lie in the warm impression of your body.