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To be born yellow into a household where the black man rules with his fists  and the white wife  body   livid   with      devotion         hip enough to confuse  trouble with   love    or   whatever   it  was, such the  lucky  one   to come up so unamerican   ,   thankful  one   in whose imagination the  country danger is   so ambient and precise  of   source   it vanishes    and with each departure  more affectionate    machines   panting   to run the dream between  hope    and  habit I wanted to say this more clearly         In what ways  did   watching  your black father beat your white mother   empower   you   as a brown   baby   ?   in  a blue    way      is  there anything   so  cruel   so    crude    as  to say   you felt   each   of your hands   in their  puppet   throats   as they screamed   for help   in   unison   but  only    one  was   hunted  for   room   within the invisible  listener   Only one  could  pray  that      far I wanted to say this more clearly       trustless of a soul  who hadn’t   suffered  he tore  hers  toward him And I arrived as a kind of vengeance, the many versions of war worn raw by their sex, come to be as the treacherous peace of empty pacts    and broken  chessmen were scattered all over the room It’s like being the last person alive

Be the mistress of my choice, Clean in manners, clear in voice; Be she witty, more than wise, Pure enough, though not precise; Be she showing in her dress, Like a civil wilderness, That the curious may detect Order in a sweet neglect; Be she rolling in her eye, Tempting all the passers by; And each ringlet of her hair, An enchantment, or a snare, For to catch the lookers on; But herself held fast by none. Let her Lucrece all day be, Thais in the night, to me. Be she such, as neither will Famish me, nor overfill.

What land have you cast from the blotted-out region of your face? What nation stung by watermarks was filmed out of extinction and brought forth resembling frost? What offspring must jump through the eye of birth to be winked at when covered with brick sweat? What ache piled its planks on the corner pier, now crumbles onto motionless water, sniffed at by forest smoke? What makes this song a string of beads seized by cement cracks when the camera climbs through the basement window—winter clouds coiling through its speckled lens? What season cannot locate an eye in the dark of the sound of the sun gyrating into red ocher after I thought you noticed my language was half wren, half pigeon and, together, we spoke a wing pattern on the wall that was raised to keep “us” out, there where “calling” became “culling,” “distance” distanced, in a mere scrape of enamel on yellow teeth? What father woke, turned over his wife, she didn’t want to, but he pushed until the baby leapt through, now, now, now, strummed into a chorus of burn marks on ceilings where police sirens fruit magpie skulls on trees of monsoon lightning? What, what, what—is how that song chimed in wilderness.

What length of verse can serve brave Mopsa’s good to show, Whose virtues strange, and beauties such, as no man them may know? Thus shrewdly burden, then, how can my Muse escape? The gods must help, and precious things must serve to show her shape. Like great god Saturn, fair, and like fair Venus, chaste; As smooth as Pan, as Juno mild, like goddess Iris fast. With Cupid she foresees, and goes god Vulcan’s pace; And for a taste of all these gifts, she borrows Momus’ grace. Her forehead jacinth-like, her cheeks of opal hue, Her twinkling eyes bedecked with pearl, her lips of sapphire blue, Her hair pure crapall stone, her mouth, O heavenly wide, Her skin like burnished gold, her hands like silver ore untried. As for those parts unknown, which hidden sure are best, Happy be they which believe, and never seek the rest.

Today I’m thinking of St. Paul—St. Paul, who orders us,Be perfect. He could have said, Touch your elbow to your ears, except that if you broke your arm, then snapped your neck, you might could manage it. The death inside the flawed hard currency of what we touch bamboozles us, existing only for that flaw, that deathward plunge that’s locked inside all form, till what seems solid floats away, dissolves, and these poor bastard things, no longer things, drift back to pure idea. And when, at last, we let them go we start to pity them, attend their needs: I almost have to think to keep my own heart beating through the night. I have a wife and four pink boys. I spin on all this stupid metaphysic now because last afternoon we visited some friends in town. After the pecan pie, I drank until my forehead smacked the table, and woke to find my shirt crusted with blood. When Mary didn’t yell at me, I knew she finally understood that I was gone, dissolving back. As we rode home, I tried to say,I’m sorry, Hon. The carriage bucked across the mud-dried ruts and I shut up. And she, in August heat, just sat, head cocked as if for chills hidden in the hot, damp breeze, as if they were a sound, time merely distance. O Death, I know exactly where it is— your sting. And, Grave, I know your victory. That night, around the tents, the boys caught fireflies, pinched them in half, and smeared them on their nails, then ran through pine-dark woods, waving their hands. All I could hear was laughter, shouts. And all that I could see for each one of my sons were ten blurs of faint, artificial light, never too far apart, and trembling. Like fairies, magic, sprites, they ran and shouted, “I’m not real! I’m not real!” The whole world fell away from me—perhaps I was still drunk— as on the night Titania told dazed Bottom, “Put off your human grossness so, and like an airy spirit go.” But even then the night could not hold long against the light, and light destroys roots, fog, lies, orchids, night, dawn stars, the moon, delusions, and most magic. And light sends into hiding owls, fireflies, and bats, whom for their unerring blunder, I adore the most of all night fliers. But owls, hid in a hickory, will hoot all day, and even the moon persists, like my hangover, some days till almost noon, drifting above the harsh, bright, murderous morning light—so blue, so valuable, so much like currency that if the moon were my blue coin, I’d never spend it.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

If the nose of the pig in the market of Firenze has lost its matte patina, and shines, brassy, even in the half light; if the mosaic saint on the tiles of the Basilica floor is half gone, worn by the gravity of solid soles, the passing of piety; if the arms of Venus have reentered the rubble, taken by time, her perennial lover, mutilating even the memory of beauty; and if the mother, hiding with her child from the death squads of brutality, if she, trying to keep the child quiet, to keep them from being found out, holds her hand over his mouth, holds him against her, tighter and tighter, until he stops breathing; if the restorer—trying to bring back to perfection the masterpiece scarred by its transit through time, wipes away by mistake, the mysterious smile. . . if what loves, and love is, takes away what it aims to preserve, then here is the place to fall silent, meaning well but in danger of marring what we would praise, unable to do more than wear down the marble steps to the altar, smother the fire we would keep from the wind’s extinction, or if, afraid of our fear, we lift the lid from the embers, and send abroad, into the parched night, a flight of sparks, incendiary, dying to catch somewhere, hungry for fuel, the past, its dry provision tinder for brilliance and heat, prelude to cold, and to ash. . .

Did a slave song at a master’s bidding mark Tom while asleep in Charity's womb? The whole plantation would be called to sing and dance in Master Epps’ large parlor room— after work sprung from dawn and dragged past dusk, after children auctioned to parts unknown, after funerals and whippings. Thus was the whim of the patriarch. No groans allowed, just high steppin’ celebration, grins all around, gritted or sincere. Charity threw feet, hips, arms into motion to please the tyrant piano. Was it here Tom learned how music can prove the master? While he spun in a womb of slavish laughter?

Jam jar of cigarette ends and ashes on his workbench, hammer he nailed our address to a stump with, balsa wood steamship, half-finished— is that him, waving from the stern? Well, good luck to him. Slur of sunlight filling the backyard, August’s high wattage, white blossoming, it’s a curve, it comes back.   My mother in a patio chair, leaning forward, squinting, threading her needle again, her eye lifts to the roof, to my brother, who stands and jerks his arm upward—he might be insulting the sky, but he’s only letting go a bit of green, a molded plastic soldier tied to a parachute, thin as a bread bag, it rises, it arcs against the blue—good luck to it—my sister and I below, heads tilted back as we stand in the grass, good luck to all of us, still here, still in love with it.

This person would be an animal. This animal would be large, at least as large as a workhorse. It would chew cud, like cows, having several stomachs. No one could follow it into the dense brush to witness its mating habits. Hidden by fur, its sex would be hard to determine. Definitely it would discourage investigation. But it would be, if not teased, a kind, amiable animal, confiding as a chickadee. Its intelligence would be of a high order, neither human nor animal, elvish. And it would purr, though of course, it being a house, you would sit in its lap, not it in yours.