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As day did darken on the dewless grass, There, still, wi’ nwone a-come by me To stay a-while at hwome by me Within the house, all dumb by me, I zot me sad as the eventide did pass. An’ there a win’blast shook the rattlèn door, An’ seemed, as win’ did mwoan without, As if my Jeäne, alwone without, A-stannèn on the stwone without, Wer there a-come wi’ happiness oonce mwore. I went to door; an’ out vrom trees above My head, upon the blast by me, Sweet blossoms wer a-cast by me, As if my Love, a-past by me, Did fling em down—a token ov her love. “Sweet blossoms o’ the tree where I do murn,” I thought, “if you did blow vor her, Vor apples that should grow vor her, A-vallèn down below vor her, O then how happy I should zee you kern!” But no. Too soon I voun my charm a-broke. Noo comely soul in white like her— Noo soul a-steppèn light like her— An’ nwone o’ comely height like her Went by; but all my grief ageän awoke.

— after Lorca I want to always sleep beneath a bright red blanket of leaves. I want to never wear a coat of ice. I want to learn to walk without blinking. I want to outlive the turtle and the turtle’s father, the stone. I want a mouth full of permissions and a pink glistening bud. If the wildflower and ant hill can return after sleeping each season, I want to walk out of this house wearing nothing but wind. I want to greet you, I want to wait for the bus with you weighing less than a chill. I want to fight off the bolts of gray lighting the alcoves and winding paths of your hair. I want to fight off the damp nudgings of snow. I want to fight off the wind. I want to be the wind and I want to fight off the wind with its sagging banner of isolation, its swinging screen doors, its gilded boxes, and neatly folded pamphlets of noise. I want to fight off the dull straight lines of two by fours and endings, your disapprovals, your doubts and regulations, your carbon copies. If the locust can abandon its suit, I want a brand new name. I want the pepper’s fury and the salt’s tenderness. I want the virtue of the evening rain, but not its gossip. I want the moon’s intuition, but not its questions. I want the malice of nothing on earth. I want to enter every room in a strange electrified city and find you there. I want your lips around the bell of flesh at the bottom of my ear. I want to be the mirror, but not the nightstand. I do not want to be the light switch. I do not want to be the yellow photograph or book of poems. When I leave this body, Woman, I want to be pure flame. I want to be your song.

and on the waves in turmoil in the harbor gulls floated like pieces of paper set adrift, little boat-like birds twirling in the wind-tossed waves that drove into the strong arms of the seawall at the apex of the bay where a statue of Sappho stands, young woman with a lyre—not looking out to sea but glancing at the curve of the seawall and the birds, those lost notes before rain

The length of the wind runs from mid-May to murder. The length of the wind runs from January through joy. The wind runs as long as the right hand’s first finger points to the sun after thunder. The wind gallops prayerward like a horse held in the palm of a rock, no taller than a knee bent for the sake of singing. The wind weighs more than the fossilized horse and stretches from fingernail to praise. The length of the wind runs from mid-May to mercy, January through justice. Unto the broken, dwelling in a broken, promised land, the wind drops a hammer and some are warmed and some are chilled and some laugh and some die. Silently through the nuclear physicist, the wind wicks loud as paper-scraps trailing in the wind’s wake, igniting an empiricist, fragrant through tallow. The wind strikes the wind like rice in a paddy. The wind scatters petals like blossoms of napalm. The wind snaps the backs of malnourished conquistadors bowed down to gold. It is the wind who estimates poverty in moments by the method of moments, who assesses want in units of amass. It is the wind who shakes America by the ovaries, runs the length of revolution, all the calories in a dollar. The length of the wind runts from mid-March to hunger. The length of the wind grunts from Saturday through sorrow. The wind flutters nothing but orgasms and afterplay. The wind numbers seminarians more numinous than semen. The wind is a mote on the wind. The wind is the dust that measures time in footsteps. The wind is the word in the throat of the dust. The length of the wind runs from midwife to marvel. The wind ribbons out within mid-May and mourning and dust is the voice the wind whickers glory, the wind whickers grief.

Skywind, skillful disorder, Strong tumult walking over there, Wondrous man, rowdy-sounding, World hero, with neither foot nor wing. Yeast in cloud loaves, you were thrown out Of sky’s pantry, with not one foot, How swiftly you run, and so well This moment above the high hill. Tell me, north wind of the cwm, Your route, reliable hymn. Over the lengths of the world you fly, Tonight, hill weather, please stay high, Ah man, go over Upper Aeron Be lovely and cool, stay in clear tune. Don’t hang about or let that maniac, Litigious Little Bow, hold you back, He’s poisonous. Society And its goods are closed to me. Thief of nests, though you winnow leaves No one accuses you, nor impedes You, no band of men, nor magistrate’s hand, Nor blue blade, nor flood, nor rain. Indeed, no son of man can kill you, Fire won’t burn nor treason harm you. You shall not drown, as you’re aware, You’re never stuck, you’re angle-less air. No need of swift horse to get about, Nor bridge over water, nor any boat. No officer or force will hand you over To court for fingering treetop feathers. Sight cannot see you, wide-open den, But thousands hear you, nest of great rain. You are God’s grace across the world, The roar when breaking tops of oaks are hurled, You hang clouds’ notes in heavens’ score And dance athletically over moors Dry-humored, clever creature, Over clouds’ stepping-stones you travel far, Archer on fields of snow up high, Disperser of rubbish piles in loud cries. Storm that’s stirring up the sea Randy surfer where land meets sea. Bold poet, rhyming snowdrifts you are, Sower, scatterer of leaves you are, Clown of peaks, you get off scot-free, Hurler of mad-masted, foaming sea. I was lost once I felt desire For Morfudd of the golden hair. A girl has caused my disgrace, Run up to her father’s house, Knock on the door, make him open To my messenger before the dawn, Find her if there’s any way, Give song to the voice of my sigh. You come from unsullied stars, Tell my noble, generous her: For as long as I’m alive I will be her loyal slave. My face without her’s a mess If it’s true she’s not been faithless. Go up high, see the one who’s white, Go down below, sky’s favorite. Go to Morfudd Llwyd the fair, Come back safe, wealth of the air. Translated from the Welsh

for Roger Caillois Water hollows stone, wind scatters water, stone stops the wind. Water, wind, stone. Wind carves stone, stone's a cup of water, water escapes and is wind. Stone, wind, water. Wind sings in its whirling, water murmurs going by, unmoving stone keeps still. Wind, water, stone. Each is another and no other: crossing and vanishing through their empty names: water, stone, wind.

She goes out to hang the windchime in her nightie and her work boots. It’s six-thirty in the morning and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch, windchime in her left hand, hammer in her right, the nail gripped tight between her teeth but nothing happens next because she’s trying to figure out how to switch #1 with #3. She must have been standing in the kitchen, coffee in her hand, asleep, when she heard it—the wind blowing through the sound the windchime wasn’t making because it wasn’t there. No one, including me, especially anymore believes till death do us part, but I can see what I would miss in leaving— the way her ankles go into the work boots as she stands upon the ice chest; the problem scrunched into her forehead; the little kissable mouth with the nail in it.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning's minion minion favorite, darling; also, an underling or servant , king- dom of daylight's dauphin dauphin prince; a French historical term, along with “chevalier” , dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wimpling rippling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! Buckle! to bend, attach; prepare for flight or battle. The verb could be descriptive of the bird’s action, or it could be the speaker’s imperative. AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! chevalier French word for “knight” or “champion”; pronounced Chev-ah-leer, to rhyme with “here” and “dear” No wonder of it: shéer plód shéer plód slowly, laboriously, and without break; these accent marks, inserted by Hopkins, tell the reader to place more accent or emphasis on those syllables when reading aloud makes plough down sillion sillion Fresh soil upturned by a plow (“plough”) Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear ah my dear Compare with the same phrase in the poem “Love (III)” by George Herbert, a poet Hopkins admired. , Fall, gall gall to become sore, crack, or chafe themselves, and gash gold- vermilion vermilion a vibrant scarlet color .

For Angela The Windigo is a flesh-eating, wintry demon with a man buried deep inside of it. In some Chippewa stories, a young girl vanquishes this monster by forcing boiling lard down its throat, thereby releasing the human at the core of ice. You knew I was coming for you, little one, when the kettle jumped into the fire. Towels flapped on the hooks, and the dog crept off, groaning, to the deepest part of the woods. In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up. Mother scolded the food warm and smooth in the pot and called you to eat. But I spoke in the cold trees: New one, I have come for you, child hide and lie still. The sumac pushed sour red cones through the air. Copper burned in the raw wood. You saw me drag toward you. Oh touch me, I murmured, and licked the soles of your feet. You dug your hands into my pale, melting fur. I stole you off, a huge thing in my bristling armor. Steam rolled from my wintry arms, each leaf shivered from the bushes we passed until they stood, naked, spread like the cleaned spines of fish. Then your warm hands hummed over and shoveled themselves full of the ice and the snow. I would darken and spill all night running, until at last morning broke the cold earth and I carried you home, a river shaking in the sun.

1 I wanted out of the past so I ate the air, it took me further into air. It cut me, an iridescent chord of geometric light. I breathed deep, it lit me up, it was good. All these years, lightning, rain, the sky, its little daisies. Memento mori and lux. 2 And you can’t blame me. This daisy-feeling. I was a poet with a death-style of my own waking. I occupy the rest of it. A blue-green leaving feeling. To no longer belong to a body sometimes open to air. In rain, in early morning rain. 3 Today was the day of the amphitheater in mind. The day of a dreaming speech where the light is dope and that’s all you can say. When a feeling degrades and evolves into thought like 2 a.m. dilated, revealed a star. It will say this long agony is great being awake. It is being lovely now. 4 All the stars are here that belonged to whatever was speaking. I built my life out of what was left of me. Sky and its procedures. A romanticism of clouds, trees, pale crenellations, and poetry. A musical joybang. Touching everything. 5 When the words come back their fictions remain. Thunderheads and rain, lexical waters raking gutters, carving a world. The stylus will live in the flash. A daring light from pewter to whatever. Now discrete observations produce undramatic sound, like I am a bubble, make me the sea. O, make me the sea. 6 For a long time the names of things and things unnamed. For a long time hawks and their chicks, fox and their cubs, mice and their mice. For a long time bunnies and boojum, and a name for every bird in me. I am native to feathers — their netherside. 7 The sun was a goldish wave taped to a book. A wavy diagram in a fusty book. Foxed old wave. A soft electro-fuzz enters the head. A soft fuzzy opiate lightness. What could be the message in this pointillist masquerade. What use memory. 8 I came from a different world. I will die in it. Someone saw it, I love them for seeing it. I love seeing it with them. Love watching it die in me. It wasn’t behind or beside me. Finding it wasn’t it. Being it was everything. That was the thing I thought as I fell. 9 I am that thing in morning, whatever motors in the skull, something is claimed. Sudden rain keeps it real. Rooftops from the window look stunned. Cleansed. Looking out over the day, the pale performing day. I always consult the air before composing air. 10 And what have you been given, the blue nothing asks, who are you under clanging brass? Who are you, Saturday; sing to me. See the crows thread summerismus. Afternoon shade mirrors an issuelessness. A perfection of beetle slowly treading summer’s blade. The leaves broadcast color. I was born in summer, my conqueror, breaking into wisteria. 11 The sun was a golden rag nailed to a ladder. And here the marigolds grow down to the banks. The mayflies drowse above water. How then the dazzling surface and its dictions under piled clouds, and clouds sitting there by place and sound. One thing. This thing and sound glitters. Indicative transitive particular battles the void. All afternoon a green-gold silent light on the spotted grass, sprung. 12 I know it’s summer even if I can’t decipher the call. I believe in the birds haunting me. I held on. I’m full of bluster but also full of vision. I’m not ready to put the book down. To stop singing bright spots thrilling the quicksilver over my torrent. I make sounds, forget to die. I call it living, this inhuman conch in the ear. A pewter sensation and wind. 13 The sun remains a yellow sail tacked to the sky. I am climbing air here. I am here in the open. The kestrel swerves. Its silent kerning. A stunning calibration of nothing. I’m left to see.