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Even when your friend, the radio, is still; even when her dream, the magazine, is finished; even when his life, the ticker, is silent; even when their destiny, the boulevard, is bare; And after that paradise, the dance-hall, is closed; after that theater, the clinic, is dark, Still there will be your desire, and hers, and his hopes and theirs, Your laughter, their laughter, Your curse and his curse, her reward and their reward, their dismay and his dismay and her dismay and yours— Even when your enemy, the collector, is dead; even when your counsellor, the salesman, is sleeping; even when your sweetheart, the movie queen, has spoken; even when your friend, the magnate, is gone.

This World’s an Inn, all Travellers are we; And this World’s Goods th’Accommodations be. Our Life is nothing but a Winter’s Day; Some only break their Fast, and so away. Others stay Dinner, and depart full fed. The deepest Age but sups and goes to bed. He’s most in Debt that lingers out the Day; Who dies betimes has less and less to pay.

he hooked to the body hard took it well and loved to fight had seven in a row and a small fleck over one eye, and then he met a kid from Camden with arms thin as wires— it was a good one, the safe lions roared and threw money; they were both up and down many times, but he lost that one and he lost the rematch in which neither of them fought at all, hanging on to each other like lovers through the boos, and now he’s over at Mike’s changing tires and oil and batteries, the fleck over the eye still young, but you don’t ask him, you don’t ask him anything except maybe you think it’s going to rain? or you think the sun’s gonna come out? to which he’ll usually answer hell no, but you’ll have your important tank of gas and drive off.

Some prowl sea-beds, some hurtle to a star and, mother, some obsessed turn over every stone or open graves to let that starlight in. There are men who would open anything. Harvey, the circulation of the blood, and Freud, the circulation of our dreams, pried honourably and honoured are like all explorers. Men who’d open men. And those others, mother, with diseases like great streets named after them: Addison, Parkinson, Hodgkin—physicians who’d arrive fast and first on any sour death-bed scene. I am their slowcoach colleague, half afraid, incurious. As a boy it was so: you know how my small hand never teased to pieces an alarm clock or flensed a perished mouse. And this larger hand’s the same. It stretches now out from a white sleeve to hold up, mother, your X-ray to the glowing screen. My eyes look but don’t want to; I still don’t want to know.

Mornings, the body’s old winter monochrome gives its image of extraordinary cold to a million hives— I could imagine a lanthorn as it swallows its strange light and gleams from within as if reborn when the bees come.

1 “must represent the governess for, of course, the creature itself could not inspire such terror.” staring at me fixedly, no trace of recognition. “when the window opened of its own accord. In the big walnut tree were six or seven wolves ... strained attention. They were white.” (The fear of cloudy skies.) like strangers! After five years Misgiving. Misdoubt. 2 (The fear that one is dreaming.) The moon was shining, suddenly everything around me appeared (The fear of) unfamiliar. Wild vista inside or near the home. (Dread of bearing a monster.) If I failed to overlook the torn cushions, three teapots side by side, strewn towels, socks, papers— both foreign and stale. 3 when I saw the frame was rotten, crumbling away from the glass, in spots, in other places still attached with huge globs of putty. The doctor forced me to repeat the word. Chimera. Cold feet. scared and unreal looking at buildings. The thin Victorians with scaly paint, their flimsy backporches linked by skeletal stairways. 4 After five years (The fear that you are not at home.) I was sitting in the alcove where I never sit when I noticed a single eye, crudely drawn in pencil, in a corner near the floor. The paint was blistering— beneath it I saw white. 5 Sparrows settle on the sagging wires. (Fear of sights not turned to words.) Horrific. Grisly. “Rumplestiltskin!” Not my expression. Not my net of veins beneath thin skin. (A morbid dread of throbbing.) Of its own accord

Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which to good Men is an Abomination. Our Smith of late most wonderfully swore, That whilst he breathed he would drink no more; But since, I know his Meaning, for I think He meant he would not breath whilst he did drink.

China is made of earth, of sun-dried mud. In this part of China everything is made from the earth: the houses, the walls around cities, and villages, the tombs scattered over the countryside. Even the people. There are hills below that appear to be piles of mud set out to dry in the sun, naked, without a single tree or bush. They crowd around the landscape like the coils of bulging intestines tossed on the ground outside butchers' shops, slowly unraveling. Sometimes we fly so low that we almost touch them. And then I notice that the wind has brushed some kind of pattern into the earth: a mysterious alphabet written in the mud, struggling to communicate something precise. But there is not a single animal or human being in the yellow desert below. Not a single village. Suddenly we are landing: Xian, the geographic center of China, where Chinese civilization was born, in the cradle of the Yellow River. In front of the terminal, three children are playing with a lump of earth: they are bundled up in jackets and brightly printed cotton trousers. I join them in their game until a young woman comes out of the terminal to call me in for dinner. One of the children grabs me by my overcoat, to keep me from leaving. So do the other two, clinging to me, asking me not to go. The young woman comes out again, and yells at them to stop. They let go, disappointed. One of them calls to me as I turn away: Come back soon! We eat quickly and then prepare to take off for Lanchow. My three new friends wave goodbye to me. The littlest one gives me a present: a pebble, a precious gift. In this part of China there are no stones. You have to go to Karelia to find stone, very far north; or to the Caucasus; or to southern Siberia, along the slopes of the Pamir, slanting toward the steppes of Central Asia. I put the pebble in my pocket, to take back home, to show what a precious gift I was given by a little Chinese girl: a pebble from the cradle of Chinese civilization. A civilization made of earth, a civilization without bones, without a skeleton for support. A civilization of assembled customs, which suddenly unravel, dissolving into thousands of separate gestures, thousands of calligraphic icons, thousands of smells, colors, flavors, thousands of different shades. And then just as suddenly they solidify again into tradition, memory, habit. It is this absence of stone, of solid, durable material, which makes China such an exquisite thing. Everything is reflected: an unimaginable number of movements, of patterns, thoughts, images, of which we see the copies in immense numbers, but never the originals. The originals were destroyed long ago. Here are the four elements out of which China is made: Earth, Wood, Porcelain, Silk. The most durable of these is Silk. I should add a fifth element: Poetry, which is the most durable of all.

Man’s rich with little, were his Judgment true, Nature is frugal, and her Wants are few; Those few Wants answer’d, bring sincere Delights, But Fools create themselves new Appetites. Fancy and Pride seek Things at vast Expence, Which relish not to Reason nor to Sense Like Cats in Airpumps, to subsist we strive On Joys too thin to keep the Soul alive.

Where do you want ghosts to reside? In our wakeful hours there are flowers which produce nightmares We burned continents of silence   the future of nations the breathing of the fighters got thicker   became like oxen’s there is in that breath sparkles of scorched flesh and the fainting of stars we crucify Gilgamesh on a TANK Viking II reaches Mars Imam Ali dances over a nuclear blast cursed are the clouds which repel water cursed are the Arabs who fell tall and haggard eucalyptus trees