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you gave me a white rose put the lamp on the stove it caught fire the I Ching said thunder above the lake lightning in Baker Street switched on the cooker and blew a fuse blue flash you see the whole experience is electric

Yes, the heart aches, but you know or think you know it could be indigestion after all, the stomach uttering its after-lunch cantata for clarinet and strings, while blank panic can be just a two-o'clock shot of the fantods, before the afternoon comes on in toe-shoes and black leotard, her back a pale gleaming board-game where all is not lost though the hour is late and you've got light pockets. There is a port-hole of light at the end of the hemlock tunnel: birds cross it, flashing their voices at you, and you feel— from the way they tilt their heads and their throats swell— the beat of their brief song, another sign the world is what it is: a shade-tree heavy with households, its fruit for meat, its leaf for medicine. But that business of the first kiss is hard to fathom: knees quaking, white water over broken rock, and the coracle you trusted your life to in a bit of a spin, head swimming with the smell of flesh so close you feel it breathing, spilling secrets— its inmost name, for one, and what the near future feels like, time wobbling to a tribal thing without tenses, and that tenacious "I" a thing of the past, only a particle of the action now, nothing separate, a luminous tumult, an affair of air and palate, air and larynx, tongue, throat, teeth, whatever brings the words out in their summer dresses—and you can hear the crow's black scavenger guffawing, egg- and offal-scoffer, comedian of windspin, so all of a sudden you rush your kingdom-come, the two of you, insects shedding your dry, chitinous skins. And although what's left is raw for a while, the slightest breath burns it, in time it comes to become you, you can live into it, intoning the Sebastian koan— whose who in pain, who's who?— and know, or close-to-know, the here it is: two clean rooms in the next parish to wholeness.

That Whitsun, I was late getting away: Not till about One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out, All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense Of being in a hurry gone. We ran Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence The river’s level drifting breadth began, Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet. All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept For miles inland, A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept. Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and Canals with floatings of industrial froth; A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped And rose: and now and then a smell of grass Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth Until the next town, new and nondescript, Approached with acres of dismantled cars. At first, I didn’t notice what a noise The weddings made Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys The interest of what’s happening in the shade, And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls I took for porters larking with the mails, And went on reading. Once we started, though, We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls In parodies of fashion, heels and veils, All posed irresolutely, watching us go, As if out on the end of an event Waving goodbye To something that survived it. Struck, I leant More promptly out next time, more curiously, And saw it all again in different terms: The fathers with broad belts under their suits And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat; An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms, The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes, The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that Marked off the girls unreally from the rest. Yes, from cafés And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days Were coming to an end. All down the line Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round; The last confetti and advice were thrown, And, as we moved, each face seemed to define Just what it saw departing: children frowned At something dull; fathers had never known Success so huge and wholly farcical; The women shared The secret like a happy funeral; While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared At a religious wounding. Free at last, And loaded with the sum of all they saw, We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam. Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast Long shadows over major roads, and for Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem Just long enough to settle hats and say I nearly died, A dozen marriages got under way. They watched the landscape, sitting side by side —An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And someone running up to bowl—and none Thought of the others they would never meet Or how their lives would all contain this hour. I thought of London spread out in the sun, Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat: There we were aimed. And as we raced across Bright knots of rail Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail Travelling coincidence; and what it held Stood ready to be loosed with all the power That being changed can give. We slowed again, And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Who kills my history knows it is buried in the same air ay breathe. Only a hair is needed to keep you, mother. Only a fit of bone. Comfort, comfort, ay am my own. Wanting simple, a sun like water, a flow and stir of air. Warm stone, black-warm, dirt scent and bird. Ay am put out to weather. Animal eyed me here—heaving, breathing over— felt by smell for me and loomed. Air shifted my hair as it neared and sniffed then left. Comfort, comfort me. A thresh of sticks and vine, hand-carried high—ay am my own weight carried by, kind horse, kind mother, gone.

I ran up six flights of stairs to my small furnished room opened the window and began throwing out those things most important in life First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink: “Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!” “Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide ... OUT!” Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement: “It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!” Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency! All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!” I pushed her fat ass out and screamed: “You always end up a bummer!” I picked up Faith Hope Charity all three clinging together: “Without us you’ll surely die!” “With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!” Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty— As I led her to the window I told her: “You I loved best in life ... but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!” Not really meaning to drop her I immediately ran downstairs getting there just in time to catch her “You saved me!” she cried I put her down and told her: “Move on.” Went back up those six flights went to the money there was no money to throw out. The only thing left in the room was Death hiding beneath the kitchen sink: “I’m not real!” It cried “I’m just a rumor spread by life ... ” Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all and suddenly realized Humor was all that was left— All I could do with Humor was to say: “Out the window with the window!”

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas , I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere , for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.

Why Brownlee left, and where he went, Is a mystery even now. For if a man should have been content It was him; two acres of barley, One of potatoes, four bullocks, A milker, a slated farmhouse. He was last seen going out to plough On a March morning, bright and early. By noon Brownlee was famous; They had found all abandoned, with The last rig unbroken, his pair of black Horses, like man and wife, Shifting their weight from foot to Foot, and gazing into the future.

I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness. Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies— Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury. So he will be, though law be clear as crystal, Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony. Come, let us vote against our human nature, Crying to God in all the polling places To heal our everlasting sinfulness And make us sages with transfigured faces.

Because we rage inside the old boundaries, like a young girl leaving the Church, scared of her parents. Because we all dream of saving the shaggy, dung-caked buffalo, shielding the herd with our bodies. Because grief unites us, like the locked antlers of moose who die on their knees in pairs.

Comes the time when it’s later and onto your table the headwaiter puts the bill, and very soon after rings out the sound of lively laughter— Picking up change, hands like a walrus, and a face like a barndoor’s, and a head without any apparent size, nothing but two eyes— So that’s you, man, or me. I make it as I can, I pick up, I go faster than they know— Out the door, the street like a night, any night, and no one in sight, but then, well, there she is, old friend Liz— And she opens the door of her cadillac, I step in back, and we’re gone. She turns me on— There are very huge stars, man, in the sky, and from somewhere very far off someone hands me a slice of apple pie, with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it, and I eat it— Slowly. And while certainly they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket of these cats not making it, I make it in my wicker basket.