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Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth, Of the good they confer on us, that their silence Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners, Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks For their keeping the soil from packing so tight That no root, however determined, could pierce it? Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them, How the weight of our debt would crush us Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive, The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover, And wanted nothing that we could give them, Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment. A debt to angels would be easy in comparison, Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve An even brighter and lighter master. Lucky for us they don't know what they're doing, These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission Than nature feels in providing for our survival. Better save our gratitude for a friend Who gives us more than we can give in return And never hints she's waiting for reciprocity. "If I had nickel, I'd give it to you," The lover says, who, having nothing available In the solid, indicative world, scrapes up A coin or two in the world of the subjunctive. "A nickel with a hole drilled in the top So you can fasten it to your bracelet, a charm To protect you against your enemies." For his sake, she'd wear it, not for her own, So he might believe she's safe as she saunters Home across the field at night, the moon above her, Below her the loam, compressed by the soles of her loafers, And the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent, As they persist, oblivious, in their service.

is a woman burying bread beneath her lawn. praying for summer to make whole loaves break in their plastic shells through dirt like so many hands. worry is how i thumb a groove in the stolen jewel case in my back pocket at tower records, the man puts his hands on me & i’m cooked, i’m crooked, red handed, red thumbed. had enough money in my pocket for music & who really needs that bad? all my father’s overtime stocked in our pantry. all my mother’s edges worried smooth below the river of her boss’s hands. who am i who steals music who sells drugs because i love how it sounds. who sold my own good mouth for gold. a man puts his hands on me & i’m his & i’m paid. in the old country women buried what little we had in the dirt & hoped it would make more better on earth. in this country all food is unzipped from its plastic & passes clean through us. my grandmother’s panic is a relic, is bread unearthed from some forgotten dust bowl still dark & moldy & whole. why not eat the hand that feeds you, i think, why not eat the arm, the elbow, the shoulder? why not eat the whole damned body alive

The harp at Nature’s advent strung Has never ceased to play; The song the stars of morning sung Has never died away. And prayer is made, and praise is given, By all things near and far; The ocean looketh up to heaven, And mirrors every star. Its waves are kneeling on the strand, As kneels the human knee, Their white locks bowing to the sand, The priesthood of the sea! They pour their glittering treasures forth, Their gifts of pearl they bring, And all the listening hills of earth Take up the song they sing. The green earth sends its incense up From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewy cup She pours her sacred wine. The mists above the morning rills Rise white as wings of prayer; The altar-curtains of the hills Are sunset’s purple air. The winds with hymns of praise are loud, Or low with sobs of pain,— The thunder-organ of the cloud, The dropping tears of rain. With drooping head and branches crossed The twilight forest grieves, Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost From all its sunlit leaves. The blue sky is the temple’s arch, Its transept earth and air, The music of its starry march The chorus of a prayer. So Nature keeps the reverent frame With which her years began, And all her signs and voices shame The prayerless heart of man.

For Ruben Ahoueya Today in America people were bought and sold: five hundred for a "likely Negro wench." If someone at auction is worth her weight in gold, how much would she be worth by pound? By ounce? If I owned an unimaginable quantity of wealth, could I buy an iota of myself? How would I know which part belonged to me? If I owned part, could I set my part free? It must be worth something—maybe a lot— that my great-grandfather, they say, killed a lion. They say he was black, with muscles as hard as iron, that he wore a necklace of the claws of the lion he'd fought. How much do I hear, for his majesty in my blood? I auction myself. And I make the highest bid.

5 am .  One-quarter past. Distant chimes inform me this. A bell peal knells the mist. And sunlight’s not yet bludgeoning. But some light gets blood going. Last night it was snowing and now every path’s a pall. Though mine the only footfalls at this hour of awe. Above hangs a canopy of needle leaf. Below, the season’s mean deceit— that everything stays white and clean. It doesn’t, of course, but I wish it. My prayers are green with this intent, imploring winter wrens to trill and begging scuttling bucks come back. There’s something that I lack. A wryneck bullet-beaks a branch. His woodworm didn’t have a chance. What I miss, I’ve never had. But I am not a ghost. I am a guest. And life is thirst, at best. So do not strike me, Heart. I am, too, tinder. I’m flammable as birch bark, even damp. Blue spruce, bee-eater— be sweeter to me. Let larksong shudder to its January wheeze, but gift these hands a happiness just once. It is half passed. And I am cold. Another peal has tolled. I’ve told the sum of my appeals. I need not watch for fox. They do not congregate at dawn. But I would, were I one.

1 An old man bending I come among new faces, Years looking backward resuming in answer to children, Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens that love me, (Arous’d and angry, I’d thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war, But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d and I resign’d myself, To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead;) Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances, Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;) Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth, Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you to tell us? What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics, Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains? 2 O maidens and young men I love and that love me, What you ask of my days those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls, Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover’d with sweat and dust, In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge, Enter the captur’d works—yet lo, like a swift running river they fade, Pass and are gone they fade—I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys, (Both I remember well—many of the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.) But in silence, in dreams’ projections, While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.) Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, Straight and swift to my wounded I go, Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground, Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital, To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return, To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss, An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill’d again. I onward go, I stop, With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds, I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable, One turns to me his appealing eyes—poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you. 3 On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,) The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine, Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard, (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death! In mercy come quickly.) From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand, I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood, Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv’d neck and side falling head, His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump, And has not yet look’d on it. I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, But a day or two more, for see the frame all wasted and sinking, And the yellow-blue countenance see. I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound, Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail. I am faithful, I do not give out, The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen, These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.) 4 Thus in silence in dreams’ projections, Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad, (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested, Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)

When I woke the darkness was so thick, So palpable and black that my eyes Seemed blind as stone staring into stone. The blade that I had dreamed, efficient and quick As it cut into my thigh, cleaning a gangrened Wound infected to the bone, seemed poised Above my throat: Close-grained, impenetrable, The blackness rose before me like a wall. And then off in the next room, nervous, light, A soft padding as of an animal Raced like my heartbeat in my temples Round and round, trapped, stealthily desperate As if hunting its own track, terrified And captivated by its own odor. Skin cool in the night air, eyes drilling Through the dark, who I was before I Slept had burned off like a vapor So that amnesiac and pure, witnessing My terror that I no longer recognized As my own, my mind floated beyond me To confront that frantic, closing footfall As Jacob dreaming met his dark angel— Though in my wrestling nothing blessed me Or promised any blessing; but was a mask whose eyes Were all black pupil, blind as molten tar. I strained to see what paced there, my eyes burning Through the dark until a pair of eyes blazed Back across the blackness, an insistent, glazed Staring that shimmered and disappeared. The shining blade plunged at my throat, my mind Stretched and twisted, its wires tightening And turning as the creature lunged back and forth And with a deep-throated yowling, thrashing And thrashing to fight clear of its own circling, Cleanly leapt away. I reached for the knife But gripped only air, my eyes pressing Deeper and deeper into the night’s black stone, Cutting the way the knife had cut into my wound, Probing for the white shining of the bone: What had I become? What darkness had my dream Led me down into? Too frightened even To move, I lay bound and sweating in The sheets, the moon a warning-bell beating On the glass, its light carving out the curtains Like the shadow of a wing across the windowpane.

1. The leaves asleep under the wind are the wounds’ ship, and the ages collapsed on top of each other are the wound’s glory, and the trees rising out of our eyelashes are the wound’s lake. The wound is to be found on bridges where the grave lengthens and patience goes on to no end between the shores of our love and death. The wound is a sign, and the wound is a crossing too. 2. To the language choked by tolling bells I offer the voice of the wound. To the stone coming from afar to the dried-up world crumbling to dust to the time ferried on creaky sleighs I light up the fire of the wound. And when history burns inside my clothes and when blue nails grow inside my books, I cry out to the day, “Who are you, who tosses you into my virgin land?” And inside my book and on my virgin land I stare into a pair of eyes made of dust. I hear someone saying, “I am the wound that is born and grows as your history grows.” 3. I named you cloud, wound of the parting dove. I named you book and quill and here I begin the dialogue between me and the ancient tongue in the island of tomes in the archipelago of the ancient fall. And here I teach these words to the wind and the palms, O wound of the parting dove. 4. If I had a harbor in the land of dreams and mirrors, if I had a ship, if I had the remains of a city, if I had a city in the land of children and weeping, I would have written all this down for the wound’s sake, a song like a spear that penetrates trees, stone, and sky, soft like water unbridled, startling like conquest. 5. Rain down on our desert O world adorned with dream and longing. Pour down, and shake us, we, the palms of the wound, tear out branches from trees that love the silence of the wound, that lie awake staring at its pointed eyelashes and soft hands. World adorned with dream and longing world that falls on my brow like the lash of a wound, don’t come close—the wound is closer— don’t tempt me—the wound is more beautiful. That magic that your eyes had flung on the last kingdoms— the wound has passed over it, passed and did not leave a single sail to tempt toward salvation, did not leave a single island behind.

The shock comes slowly as an afterthought. First you hear the words and they are like all other words, ordinary, breathing out of lips, moving toward you in a straight line. Later they shatter and rearrange themselves. They spell something else hidden in the muscles of the face, something the throat wanted to say. Decoded, the message etches itself in acid so every syllable becomes a sore. The shock blooms into a carbuncle. The body bends to accommodate it. A special scarf has to be worn to conceal it. It is now the size of a head. The next time you look, it has grown two eyes and a mouth. It is difficult to know which to use. Now you are seeing everything twice. After a while it becomes an old friend. It reminds you every day of how it came to be.

Cupid as he lay among Roses, by a Bee was stung. Whereupon in anger flying To his Mother, said thus crying; Help! O help! your Boy’s a dying. And why, my pretty Lad, said she? Then blubbering, replied he, A winged Snake has bitten me, Which Country people call a Bee. At which she smil’d; then with her hairs And kisses drying up his tears: Alas! said she, my Wag! if this Such a pernicious torment is: Come tell me then, how great’s the smart Of those, thou woundest with thy Dart!