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I’ve trod the links with many a man, And played him club for club; ’Tis scarce a year since I began And I am still a dub. But this I’ve noticed as we strayed Along the bunkered way, No one with me has ever played As he did yesterday. It makes no difference what the drive, Together as we walk, Till we up to the ball arrive, I get the same old talk: “To-day there’s something wrong with me, Just what I cannot say. Would you believe I got a three For this hole—yesterday?” I see them top and slice a shot, And fail to follow through, And with their brassies plough the lot, The very way I do. To six and seven their figures run, And then they sadly say: “I neither dubbed nor foozled one When I played—yesterday!” I have no yesterdays to count, No good work to recall; Each morning sees hope proudly mount, Each evening sees it fall. And in the locker room at night, When men discuss their play, I hear them and I wish I might Have seen them—yesterday. Oh, dear old yesterday! What store Of joys for men you hold! I’m sure there is no day that’s more Remembered or extolled. I’m off my task myself a bit, My mind has run astray; I think, perhaps, I should have writ These verses—yesterday.

Yesterday, the sunshine made the air glow pushing me like a sixteen-year-old to toss my shirt off, and run along the river shore, splashing in the water, wading out to the reeds, my heart an ancient Yaki drum and I believed, more than believed, the air beneath trees was female blue dancers I approached, and there in the dry leaves, in the crisp twigs, I turned softly as if dancing with a blue woman made of air, sunlight, in shrub-weed skirts. I knew the dance that would please the Gods, I knew the dance that would make the river water smile glistening ever silvering, I knew the dance steps that praised my ancestors. Yeah, I wanted to write you a poem woman for two days, and today it was gray and snowy and overcast, about how I startled the mallards from their shallow refuge beneath the Russian olive trees and how the male purposely came close to me diverting my attention to it its female love went the other way risking its life, that's what I saw, the male fly before the hunter's rifles, circle in sights of hunters and take the shots, the roaring rifle blast after blast and circle beyond over the fields to meet its female companion. That's how I miss you, that's how I wanted to write you a poem since we left you one way me another way. I was the male taking with me the hunters that would harm you risking my heart so yours wouldn't be hurt, fronting myself as possible prey so you could escape, that kind of poem I am writing you now. Circling as hunters aim down on me while you rise, rise, rise into the blue sky and meet me over in the next fields. I wanted to write you a poem for two days now to tell you how happy I was, seeing a white crane arc between banks in the irrigation ditch with furious efforts, its big wings flapping like an awkward nine-year-old kid much taller than the others his age with size twelve sneakers flapping down the basketball court. But once the white crane found its balance, its wings their grace, it glided more perfectly than a ballet dancer's leap across air, all of its feathers ballet dancer's toes, all of its feathers delicate dancers all of its feathers, in motion made me believe in myself, but more, when it rose, swooped up, the line of ascent up made me think of the curve of your spine, how I traced my finger down your spine when you slept, your spine is the ascent of the crane toward the sunshine, and my hands my face my torso and chest and legs and hips became air, a blue cold artic air you glided up in your song of winter love.

Sixty-two, sixty-three, I most remember As time W. C. Williams dies and we are Back from a hard two years in Guatemala Where the meager provision of being Schoolmaster for the kids of the patrones Of two coffee plantations has managed Neither a life nor money. Leslie dies in Horror of bank giving way as she and her Sister and their friends tunnel in to make A cubby. We live in an old cement brick Farmhouse already inside the city limits Of Albuquerque. Or that has all really Happened and we go to Vancouver where, Thanks to friends Warren and Ellen Tallman, I get a job teaching at the University of British Columbia. It’s all a curious dream, a rush To get out of the country before the sad Invasion of the Bay of Pigs, that bleak use Of power. One of my British colleagues Has converted the assets of himself and His wife to gold bullion and keeps the Ingots in a sturdy suitcase pushed under Their bed. I love the young, at least I Think I do, in their freshness, their attempt To find ways into Canada from the western Reaches. Otherwise the local country seems Like a faded Edwardian sitcom. A stunned Stoned woman runs one Saturday night up And down the floors of the Hydro Electric Building on Pender with the RCMP in hot Pursuit where otherwise we stood in long Patient lines, extending often several blocks Up the street. We were waiting to get our Hands stamped and to be given a 12 pack Of Molson’s. I think, I dream, I write the Final few chapters of The Island, the despairs Gathering at the end. I read Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing In America but am too uptight To enjoy his quiet, bright wit. Then that Summer there is the great Vancouver Poetry Festival, Allen comes back from India, Olson From Gloucester, beloved Robert Duncan From Stinson Beach. Denise reads “Hypocrite Women” to the Burnaby ladies and Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Margaret Avison are there Too along with a veritable host of the young. Then it’s autumn again. I’ve quit my job And we head back to Albuquerque And I teach again at the university, and Sometime just about then I must have Seen myself as others see or saw me, Even like in a mirror, but could not quite Accept either their reassuring friendship Or their equally locating anger. Selfish, Empty, I kept at it. Thirty-eight years later I seem to myself still much the same, Even if I am happier, I think, and older.

I Put a sun in Sunday, Sunday. Eleven please ten hoop. Hoop. Cousin coarse in coarse in soap. Cousin coarse in soap sew up. soap. Cousin coarse in sew up soap. II A lea ender stow sole lightly. Not a bet beggar. Nearer a true set jump hum, A lamp lander so seen poor lip. III Never so round. A is a guess and a piece. A is a sweet cent sender. A is a kiss slow cheese. A is for age jet. IV New deck stairs. Little in den little in dear den. V Polar pole. Dust winder. Core see. A bale a bale o a bale. VI Extravagant new or noise peal extravagant. VII S a glass. Roll ups. VIII Powder in wails, powder in sails, powder is all next to it is does wait sack rate all goals like chain in clear. IX Negligible old star. Pour even. It was a sad per cent. Does on sun day. Watch or water. So soon a moon or a old heavy press. X Pearl cat or cat or pill or pour check. New sit or little. New sat or little not a wad yet. Heavy toe heavy sit on head. XI Ex, ex, ex. Bull it bull it bull it bull it. Ex Ex Ex. XII Cousin plates pour a y shawl hood hair. No see eat. XIII They are getting, bad left log lope, should a court say stream, not a dare long beat a soon port. XIV Colored will he. Calamity. Colored will he Is it a soon. Is it a soon. Is it a soon. soon. Is it a soon. soon. XV Nobody’s ice. Nobody’s ice to be knuckles. Nobody’s nut soon. Nobody’s seven picks. Picks soap stacks. Six in set on seven in seven told, to top. XVI A spread chin shone. A set spread chin shone. XVII No people so sat. Not an eider. Not either. Not either either. XVIII Neglect, neglect use such. Use such a man. Neglect use such a man. Such some here. XIX Note tie a stem bone single pair so itching. XX Little lane in lay in a circular crest. XXI Peace while peace while toast. Paper eight paper eight or, paper eight ore white. XXII Coop pour. Never a single ham. Charlie. Charlie. XXIII Neglect or. A be wade. Earnest care lease. Least ball sup. XXIV Meal dread. Meal dread so or. Meal dread so or bounce. Meal dread so or bounce two sales. Meal dread so or bounce two sails. Not a rice. No nor a pray seat, not a little muscle, not a nor noble, not a cool right more than a song in every period of nails and pieces pieces places of places. XXV Neat know. Play in horizontal pet soap. XXVI Nice pose. Supper bell. Pull a rope pressed. Color glass. XXVII Nice oil pail. No gold go at. Nice oil pail. Near a paper lag sought. What is an astonishing won door. A please spoon. XXVIII Nice knee nick ear. Not a well pair in day. Nice knee neck core. What is a skin pour in day. XXIX Climb climb max. Hundred in wait. Paper cat or deliver XXX Little drawers of center. Neighbor of dot light. Shorter place to make a boom set. Marches to be bright. XXXI Suppose a do sat. Suppose a negligence. Suppose a cold character. XXXII Suppose a negligence. Suppose a sell. Suppose a neck tie. XXXIII Suppose a cloth cape. Suppose letter suppose let a paper. Suppose soon. XXXIV A prim a prim prize. A sea pin. A prim a prim prize A sea pin. XXXV Witness a way go. Witness a way go. Witness a way go. Wetness. Wetness. XXXVI Lessons lettuce. Let us peer let us polite let us pour, let us polite. Let us polite. XXXVII Neither is blessings bean. XXXVIII Dew Dew Drops. Leaves kindly Lasts. Dew Dew Drops. XXXIX A R. nuisance. Not a regular plate. Are, not a regular plate. XL Lock out sandy. Lock out sandy boot trees. Lock out sandy boot trees knit glass. Lock out sandy boot trees knit glass. XLI A R not new since. New since. Are new since bows less. XLII A jell cake. A jelly cake. A jelly cake. XLIII Peace say ray comb pomp Peace say ray comb pump Peace say ray comb pomp Peace say ray comb pomp. XLIV Lean over not a coat low. Lean over not a coat low by stand. Lean over net. Lean over net a coat low hour stemmed Lean over a coat low a great send. Lean over coat low extra extend. XLV Copying Copying it in. XLVI Never second scent never second scent in stand. Never second scent in stand box or show. Or show me sales. Or show me sales oak. Oak pet. Oak pet stall. XLVII Not a mixed stick or not a mixed stick or glass. Not a mend stone bender, not a mend stone bender or stain. XLVIII Polish polish is it a hand, polish is it a hand or all, or all poles sick, or all poles sick. XLIX Rush in rush in slice. L Little gem in little gem in an. Extra. LI In the between egg in, in the between egg or on. LII Leaves of gas, leaves of get a towel louder. LIII Not stretch. LIV Tea Fulls. Pit it pit it little saddle pear say. LV Let me see wheat air blossom. Let me see tea. LVI Nestle in glass, nestle in walk, nestle in fur a lining. LVII Pale eaten best seek. Pale eaten best seek, neither has met is a glance. LVIII Suppose it is a s. Suppose it is a seal. Suppose it is a recognised opera LIX Not a sell inch, not a boil not a never seeking cellar. LX Little gem in in little gem in an. Extra. LXI Catch as catch as coal up. LXII Necklaces, neck laces, necklaces, neck laces. LXIII Little in in in in. LXIV Next or Sunday, next or sunday check. LXV Wide in swim, wide in swim pansy. LXVI Next to hear next to hear old boat seak, old boat seak next to hear LXVII Ape pail ape pail to glow. LXVIII It was in on an each tuck. It was in on an each tuck. LXIX Wire lean string, wire lean string excellent miss on one pepper cute. Open so mister soil in to close not a see wind not seat glass.

from Sonnets, Second Series XXX Yet, even ‘mid merry boyhood’s tricks and scapes, Early my heart a deeper lesson learnt; Wandering alone by many a mile burnt Black woodside, that but the snow-flake decks and drapes. And I have stood beneath Canadian sky, In utter solitudes, where the cricket’s cry Appals the heart, and fear takes visible shapes; And on Long Island’s void and isolate capes Heard the sea break like iron bars: and still, In all, I seemed to hear the same deep dirge; Borne in the wind, the insect’s tiny trill, And crash and jangle of the shaking surge; And knew not what they meant,—prophetic woe? Dim bodings, wherefore? Now, indeed, I know!

Yet to die. Unalone still. For now your pauper-friend is with you. Together you delight in the grandeur of the plains, And the dark, the cold, the storms of snow. Live quiet and consoled In gaudy poverty, in powerful destitution. Blessed are those days and nights. The work of this sweet voice is without sin. Misery is he whom, like a shadow, A dog’s barking frightens, the wind cuts down. Poor is he who, half-alive himself Begs his shade for pittance. January 15-16, 1937

The people who sang to their children in Yiddish and worked in Yiddish and made love in Yiddish are nearly all gone. Phantasmic. Heym. Der may kumt shoyn on. The month of May has arrived. At the cemetery my aunt has already draped my grandmother's half of the tombstone with a white sheet. The fabric is tacked to the polished granite by gray and brown rocks lifted from my grandfather's side of the plot. He's been gone over twenty-five years. We are in Beth Israel Cemetery, Block 50, Woodbridge, New Jersey for the unveiling and the sky is like lead. We are in my grandmother's shtetl in Poland, but everyone is dead. The Fraternal Order of Bendin-Sosnowicer Sick & Benevolent Society has kept these plots faithfully next to their Holocaust memorial— gray stone archway topped with a menorah and a curse:Pour out Thy wrath upon the Nazis and the wicked Germans for they have destroyed the seed of Jacob. May the almighty avenge their blood. Great is our sorrow, and no consolation is to be found! My sister, in her cardboard kippah, opens her prayer book—a special edition she borrowed from rabbinical school—and begins to read in Aramaic. Not one of us can bring ourselves to add anything to the fixed liturgy. My son is squatting at the next grave over, collecting decorative stones from the Glickstein's double plot. We eat yellow sponge cake and drink small cups of brandy to celebrate my grandmother's life. We are no longer mourners, says Jewish law. Can we tell this story in Yiddish? Put the words in the right places? My son cracks a plastic cup until it's shredded to strips, looks like a clear spider, sounds like an error. When my sister finally pulls back the sheet, all the things my grandmother was barely fit on the face of the marker. A year ago at the funeral, her friend Goldie told me she was strong like steel, soft like butter—women like that they don't make any more. My mother tries to show my grandmother—now this gray marker— my son, how he's grown, but he squirms from her arms.Ihr gvure iz nit tzu beshraiben. Her strength was beyond description. The people who sang to their children in Yiddish and admonished them in Yiddish are nearly all gone, whole vanished towns that exist now only in books, their maps drawn entirely by heart: this unknown continent, this language of nowhere, these stones from a land that never was.Der may kumt shoyn on. The month of May has arrived.Der vind voyet. The wind howls, says I'm not a stranger anywhere. On the stones we write all we remember, but we are poor guardians of memory. Can you say it in Yiddish? Can you bless us?

Memory is flotsam (yes) just below the surface an eternal city a heap of rubble debris smaller than your fist an animal with- out a leash organized wreck- age ghost net or one hanging silence on the phone— she's gone, my sister said, and we wept and wept over my grandmother while my sister sat with her body and me in the static and the rabbi they sent told her to recite psalms as comfort so we listened to each other breathe instead and my sister's breath was a tunnel a handful of pebbles a knotted Chinese jump-rope         her breath was the coiled terrycloth turban our grandmother wore when she cooked or walked the shallow end of her condo pool for exercise— our grandmother still somewhere in her white turban sewing Cornish game hens together with needle and string or somewhere in her good wig playing poker or somewhere in her easy chair watching CNN while cookies shaped like our initials bake in her oven O memory how much you erased how many holes         we punched in your facts since who knows the stories she never told about the camps there are no marked graves just too much food on holidays diabetes my mother's fear of ships and the motion of some suspension bridges O memory you've left us trauma below the surface and some above like the fact that I can't shake the December my sister's red hair caught fire from leaning too close to the menorah's candles, our grandmother putting her out with a dish towel with her strong arms.

I drew solitude over me, on the long shore. —Robinson Jeffers, “Prelude” For whoever does not afflict his soul through this day, shall be cut off from his people. —Leviticus 23:29 What is a Jew in solitude? What would it mean not to feel lonely or afraid far from your own or those you have called your own? What is a woman in solitude:   a queer woman or man? In the empty street, on the empty beach, in the desert what in this world as it is can solitude mean? The glassy, concrete octagon suspended from the cliffs with its electric gate, its perfected privacy is not what I mean the pick-up with a gun parked at a turn-out in Utah or the Golan Heights is not what I mean the poet’s tower facing the western ocean, acres of forest planted to the east, the woman reading in the cabin, her attack dog suddenly risen is not what I mean Three thousand miles from what I once called home I open a book searching for some lines I remember about flowers, something to bind me to this coast as lilacs in the dooryard once bound me back there—yes, lupines on a burnt mountainside, something that bloomed and faded and was written down in the poet’s book, forever: Opening the poet’s book I find the hatred in the poet’s heart: . . .the hateful-eyed and human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them Robinson Jeffers, multitude is the blur flung by distinct forms against these landward valleys and the farms that run down to the sea; the lupines are multitude, and the torched poppies, the grey Pacific unrolling its scrolls of surf, and the separate persons, stooped over sewing machines in denim dust, bent under the shattering skies of harvest who sleep by shifts in never-empty beds have their various dreams Hands that pick, pack, steam, stitch, strip, stuff, shell, scrape, scour, belong to a brain like no other Must I argue the love of multitude in the blur or defend a solitude of barbed-wire and searchlights, the survivalist’s final solution, have I a choice? To wonder far from your own or those you have called your own to hear strangeness calling you from far away and walk in that direction, long and far, not calculating risk to go to meet the Stranger without fear or weapon, protection nowhere on your mind (the Jew on the icy, rutted road on Christmas Eve prays for another Jew the woman in the ungainly twisting shadows of the street:Make those bea woman’s footsteps; as if she could believe in a woman’s god) Find someone like yourself.   Find others. Agree you will never desert each other. Understand that any rift among you means power to those who want to do you in. Close to the center, safety; toward the edges, danger. But I have a nightmare to tell:   I am trying to say that to be with my people is my dearest wish but that I also love strangers that I crave separateness I hear myself stuttering these words to my worst friends and my best enemies who watch for my mistakes in grammar my mistakes in love. This is the day of atonement; but do my people forgive me? If a cloud knew loneliness and fear, I would be that cloud. To love the Stranger, to love solitude—am I writing merely about privilege about drifting from the center, drawn to edges, a privilege we can’t afford in the world that is, who are hated as being of our kind: faggot kicked into the icy river, woman dragged from her stalled car into the mist-struck mountains, used and hacked to death young scholar shot at the university gates on a summer evening walk, his prizes and studies nothing, nothing availing his Blackness Jew deluded that she’s escaped the tribe, the laws of her exclusion, the men too holy to touch her hand;   Jew who has turned her back on midrash and mitzvah(yet wears the chai on a thong between her breasts) hiking alone found with a swastika carved in her back at the foot of the cliffs (did she die as queer or as Jew?) Solitude, O taboo, endangered species on the mist-struck spur of the mountain, I want a gun to defend you In the desert, on the deserted street, I want what I can’t have: your elder sister, Justice, her great peasant’s hand outspread her eye, half-hooded, sharp and true And I ask myself, have I thrown courage away? have I traded off something I don’t name? To what extreme will I go to meet the extremist? What will I do to defend my want or anyone’s want to search for her spirit-vision far from the protection of those she has called her own? Will I find O solitude your plumes, your breasts, your hair against my face, as in childhood, your voice like the mockingbird’s singing Yes, you are loved, why else this song? in the old places, anywhere? What is a Jew in solitude? What is a woman in solitude, a queer woman or man? When the winter flood-tides wrench the tower from the rock, crumble the prophet’s headland, and the farms slide into the sea when leviathan is endangered and Jonah becomes revenger when center and edges are crushed together, the extremities crushed together on which the world was founded when our souls crash together, Arab and Jew, howling our loneliness within the tribes when the refugee child and the exile’s child re-open the blasted and forbidden city when we who refuse to be women and men as women and men are chartered, tell our stories of solitude spent in multitude in that world as it may be, newborn and haunted, what will solitude mean? 1984-1985

1 That’s right, I’m talking to you, not him or her. 2 You have been randomly selected for a security check. It has nothing to do with you, your physical features, or your name. 3 Do you now belong or have you ever belonged to a radical political organization? Do you have weapons training? Have you ever visited a training camp? Did you pack your own bags? 4 You people send your sons and daughters on suicide missions. You animals, you! 5 If you will please step aside. If you will please remove your shoes. If you will please come with me. If you will please leave the premises. If you will please not harm us. 6 May you live in interesting times. 7 As Americans, you know exactly what I’m talking about. As Americans, you may be subject to this. As Americans, you should be worried. 8 Is it you who are to blame? 9 We cannot help you. There is nothing we can do for you. 10 The agents came looking for you, at your father’s house. 11 They wanted to ask you questions. 12 I heard about you being suspected, detained, interrogated, jailed without charges, prosecuted with secret evidence, found not guilty. There’s no sense in you making a fuss— they let you go free, didn’t they? 13 Once you begin to see you differently, as separate from you, wholly other from you, then you can become like us. 14 What has history made of you? 15 Let’s get to the point: It was always like looking in the mirror— that face is you. I am you.