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By photography’s gospel, I thank you, think you back. You fail far away from me, waving at pain. A perfect song is loveless and here by your name. Things will never be the same. Are they the same yet?

Behold the gloomy tyrant’s awful form Binding the captive earth in icy chains; His chilling breath sweeps o’er the watery plains, Howls in the blast, and swells the rising storm. See from its centre bends the rifted tower, Threat’ning the lowly vale with frowning pride, O’er the scared flocks that seek its sheltering side, A fearful ruin o’er their heads to pour. While to the cheerful hearth and social board Content and ease repair, the sons of want Receive from niggard fate their pittance scant; And where some shed bleak covert may afford, Wan poverty, amidst her meagre host Casts round her haggard eyes, and shivers at the frost.

Couched on crimson cushions, pink bleeds gold and red spills into one’s heart. Broad leather keeps time, calibrating different hours in different zones unaware of the grammar that makes sense. Only random woofs and snores of two distant dogs on a very cold night clears fog that is unresolved. New plants wait for new heat — to grow, to mature. An old cane recliner contains poetry for peace — woven text keeping comfort in place. But it is the impatience of want that keeps equations unsolved. Heavy, translucent, vaporous, split red by mother tongues — winter’s breath is pink.

How long will the bed that we made together hold us there? Your stubbled cheeks grazed my skin from evening to dawn, a cloud of scattered particles now, islands of shaving foam slowly spiraling down the drain, blood drops stippling the water pink as I kiss the back of your neck, our faces framed inside a medicine cabinet mirror. The blade of your hand carves a portal out of steam, the two of us like boys behind frosted glass who wave goodbye while a car shoves off into winter. All that went unnoticed till now — empty cups of coffee stacked up in the sink, the neighborhood kids up to their necks in mounds of autumn leaves. How months on a kitchen calendar drop like frozen flies, the flu season at its peak followed by a train of magic-markered xxx’s — nights we’d spend apart. Death must work that way, a string of long distance calls that only gets through to the sound of your voice on our machine, my heart’s mute confession screened out. How long before we turn away from flowers altogether, your blind hand reaching past our bedridden shoulders to hit that digital alarm at delayed intervals — till you shut it off completely.

The wintry west extends his blast, And hail and rain does blaw; Or, the stormy north sends driving forth The blinding sleet and snaw: While tumbling brown, the burn comes down, And roars frae bank to brae; And bird and beast in covert rest, And pass the heartless day. The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast, The joyless winter-day, Let others fear, to me more dear Than all the pride of May: The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul, My griefs it seems to join; The leafless trees my fancy please, Their fate resembles mine! Thou Pow’r Supreme, whose mighty scheme These woes of mine fulfil, Here, firm, I rest, they must be best, Because they are Thy will! Then all I want (O, do Thou grant This one request of mine!) Since to enjoy Thou dost deny, Assist me to resign.

At five I wake, rise, rub on the smoking pane A port to see—water breathing in the air, Boughs broken. The sun comes up in a golden stain, Floats like a glassy sea-fruit. There is mist everywhere, White and humid, and the Harbour is like plated stone, Dull flakes of ice. One light drips out alone, One bead of winter-red, smouldering in the steam, Quietly over the roof-tops—another window Touched with a crystal fire in the sun’s gullies, One lonely star of the morning, where no stars gleam. Far away on the rim of this great misty cup, The sun gilds the dead suburbs as he rises up, Diamonds the wind-cocks, makes glitter the crusted spikes On moss-drowned gables. Now the tiles drip scarlet-wet, Swim like birds’ paving-stones, and sunlight strikes Their watery mirrors with a moister rivulet, Acid and cold. Here lie those mummied Kings, Men sleeping in houses, embalmed in stony coffins, Till the Last Trumpet calls their galleries up, And the suburbs rise with distant murmurings. O buried dolls, O men sleeping invisible there, I stare above your mounds of stone, lean down, Marooned and lonely in this bitter air, And in one moment deny your frozen town, Renounce your bodies—earth falls in clouds away, Stones lose their meaning, substance is lost in clay, Roofs fade, and that small smoking forgotten heap, The city, dissolves to a shell of bricks and paper, Empty, without purpose, a thing not comprehended, A broken tomb, where ghosts unknown sleep. And the least crystal weed, shaken with frost, The furred herbs of silver, the daisies round-eyed and tart, Painted in antic china, the smallest night-flower tossed Like a bright penny on the lawn, stirs more my heart, Strikes deeper this morning air, than mortal towers Dried to a common blindness, fainter than flowers, Fordone, extinguished, as the vapours break, And dead in the dawn. O Sun that kills with life, And brings to breath all silent things—O Dawn, Waken me with old earth, keep me awake!

The night’s drifts Pile up below me and behind my back, Slide down the hill, rise again, and build Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house. In the valley below me, Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet, The road lamps glow. They are so cold, they might as well be dark. Trucks and cars Cough and drone down there between the golden Coffins of greenhouses, the startled squawk Of a rooster claws heavily across A grove, and drowns. The gumming snarl of some grouchy dog sounds, And a man bitterly shifts his broken gears. True night still hangs on, Mist cluttered with a racket of its own. Now on the mountainside, A little way downhill among turning rocks, A square takes form in the side of a dim wall. I hear a bucket rattle or something, tinny, No other stirring behind the dim face Of the goatherd’s house. I imagine His goats are still sleeping, dreaming Of the fresh roses Beyond the walls of the greenhouse below them And of lettuce leaves opening in Tunisia. I turn, and somehow Impossibly hovering in the air over everything, The Mediterranean, nearer to the moon Than this mountain is, Shines. A voice clearly Tells me to snap out of it. Galway Mutters out of the house and up the stone stairs To start the motor. The moon and the stars Suddenly flicker out, and the whole mountain Appears, pale as a shell. Look, the sea has not fallen and broken Our heads. How can I feel so warm Here in the dead center of January? I can Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is The only life I have. I get up from the stone. My body mumbles something unseemly And follows me. Now we are all sitting here strangely On top of the sunlight.

Dark frost was in the air without, The dusk was still with cold and gloom, When less than even a shadow came And stood within the room. But of the three around the fire, None turned a questioning head to look, Still read a clear voice, on and on, Still stooped they o’er their book. The children watched their mother’s eyes Moving on softly line to line; It seemed to listen too—that shade, Yet made no outward sign. The fire-flames crooned a tiny song, No cold wind stirred the wintry tree; The children both in Faërie dreamed Beside their mother’s knee. And nearer yet that spirit drew Above that heedless one, intent Only on what the simple words Of her small story meant. No voiceless sorrow grieved her mind, No memory her bosom stirred, Nor dreamed she, as she read to two, ’Twas surely three who heard. Yet when, the story done, she smiled From face to face, serene and clear, A love, half dread, sprang up, as she Leaned close and drew them near.

Memory was the room I entered down a long corridor Thrown by the white drugs of pain though pain Was adrift on a glassy stream of green tide Where images flickered and ran on I didn’t write poetry for publication In those days but to grab the attention Of readers nearby who had been crushed by life Who floated across the exercise yard like headaches Smoking rag-cigarettes looking sideways For the next punishment for a break or maybe distraction Chips of memory kept rising to the surface Of our minds to take another bite I had no idea why poetry the squid caught me It clung to my brain in the damaging climate A creature in the alien element of air Arising from centuries of survival Thoughts must be inky and capable Of working the bait with a black beak For a quick kill and a metaphysical rise up through the abyss Poetry in those days was a handmade lure There were no fish or birds so I spun my lines To the ones with heads spring-loaded with resentment Their temper a red fleck twitching in an eye While poems of the future waited in line to hear my number

Pretty girl. The weather has knocked her down again and given her to the lake to wear as a skin. Why am I always being the weather? There were days in the winter when her smile was so lovely I felt the breathing of my own goodness, though it remained fetal and separate. I was a scavenger who survives with a sling and stones, but whose god nonetheless invents the first small bright bird. And it was like flight to bring food to her lips with a skeletal hand. But now she will always be naked and sad. She will be what happens to lake water that is loved and is also shallow enough. The thickening, the slowing, the black blood of it, the chest opened to reveal the inevitable heart attack. God, the silence of the chamber we watch from. What happens to water that isn’t loved? It undergoes processes. It freezes beside traffic. But the reaching out to all sides at once, the wet closing of what was open? That is a beautiful woman. So of course I stand and stare, never able to pinpoint the exact moment I killed her.