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What needeth these threnning words and wasted wind? All this cannot make me restore my prey. To rob your good, iwis, is not my mind, Nor causeless your fair hand did I display. Let love be judge or else whom next we meet That may both hear what you and I can say: She took from me an heart, and I a glove from her. Let us see now if th'one be worth th'other.

So the sun is shining blindingly but I can sort of see. It’s like looking at Mandela’s moral beauty. The dying leaves are sizzling on the trees In a shirtsleeves summer breeze. But daylight saving is over. And gaveling the courtroom to order with a four-leaf clover Is over. And it’s altogether November. And the Pellegrino bubbles rise to the surface and dismember.

Jan came this morning —I dreamt of my father he says he was riding in an oak coffin I walked next to the hearse and father turned to me: you dressed me nicely and the funeral is very beautiful at this time of year so many flowers it must have cost a lot don’t worry about it father —I say—let people see we loved you that we spared nothing six men in black livery walk nicely at our sides father thought for a while and said—the key to the desk is in the silver inkwell there is still some money in the second drawer on the left with this money—I say— we will buy you a gravestone a large one of black marble it isn’t necessary—says father— better give it to the poor six men in black livery walk nicely at our sides they carry burning lanterns again he seemed to be thinking —take care of the flowers in the garden cover them for the winter I don’t want them to be wasted you are the oldest—he says— from a little felt bag behind the painting take out the cuff links with real pearls let them bring you luck my mother gave them to me when I finished high school then he didn’t say anything he must have entered a deeper sleep this is how our dead look after us they warn us through dreams bring back lost money hunt for jobs whisper the numbers of lottery tickets or when they can’t do this knock with their fingers on the windows and out of gratitude we imagine immortality for them snug as the burrow of a mouse

not an answer. She leaned into the apple tree, which then was evergreen, to the snake’s hands, sweet flesh, no need to be ashamed. We share and share alike, the peel not loose like night on day, but tight. She took the snake’s hands, diamondbacked, and opened its question. It was the first time she had something to give, what the man couldn’t take, the first time the man said please: please let me have a bite. He found the iron ore and brought it home. He found the coal under the forest and lit it on fire to watch it go so the snake couldn’t catch her if she fell and she couldn’t hold anything but its tongue. Never let the fire go out or else, he warned, and she held on.

What potion should I give the night so she’ll always wonder? Her pounding heart’s a rider galloping from the burning wood. Maybe my pharmacist is awake the next street over? In a crucible of  bone, snake tears mixed with herbs. Should I hurry? Call the doctor? A heart like hers is rare. And to tell the truth, if it shattered, what would I do? Translated from the Yiddish

it has long been forgotten this practice of the mother weaning a child she crushes the seeds of a green chili rubs it to her nipple what the child feels she too will   share in this act   of love my own mother says it was not meant to be cruel when cruelty she tells me is a child’s lips   torn from breast as proof back home the women wear teeth marks

They basically grow it out of sand. This is a big help because otherwise it was getting pretty enigmatic. Welcome to the desert of the real, I am an ephemeral and not too discontented citizen. I do not think the revolution is finished. So during these years, I lived in a country where I was little known, With the thunder of the Gods that protect the Icelandic tundra from advertising, Great red gods, great yellow gods, great green gods, planted at the edges of the speculative tracks along which the mind speeds from one feeling to another, from one idea to its consequence Past the proud apartment houses, fat as a fat money bag. I wish that I might stay in this pleasant, conventional city, A placid form, a modest form, but one with a claim to pleasure, And then vanish in the fogs of hypnoLondon. All are in their proper place in these optical whispering-galleries, The swan-winged horses of the skies with summer’s music in their manes, The basic Los Angeles Dingbat, A housewife in any neighborhood in any city in any part of Mexico on a Saturday night. Every Sunday is too little Sunday, A living grave, the true grave of the head. In one shout desire rises and dies. Composed while I was asleep on horseback I drift, mainly I drift.

Not reading English, and hearing about a new English thriller that hasn’t been translated. Seeing a cold beer when it’s hot out, and not being able to afford it. Having an idea that you can’t encapsulate in a line of Hölderlin, the way the professors do.

The slate black sky. The middle step of the back porch. And long ago my mother’s necklace, the beads rolling north and south. Broken the rose stem, water into drops, glass knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s pot of parsley and mint, white roots shooting like streamers through the cracks. Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath, the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken little finger on my right hand at birth— I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t been rent, divided, split? Broken the days into nights, the night sky into stars, the stars into patterns I make up as I trace them with a broken-off blade of grass. Possible, unthinkable, the cricket’s tiny back as I lie on the lawn in the dark, my heart a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.

How often now, raging weeping for the days love gives then takes away, takes from you the slightly chapped hand laid on the one you’re pointing at a tree, and the voice that breathes coffeeberry bush into your mouth. The finger that taps and feathers your ear but the giggle’s gone before you turn around. The sandalwood scent hanging in the room, the auburn strand like a flaw in the porcelain, the off-course nail clipping in the carpet. The days eat into your stomach, knife you with longing for relief from love that you cannot leave or leave alone, from its rings of fire where you won’t burn down to ash or be transformed. You become them, and they keep burning and have a coffeeberry voice. Listen how their rhymes sing the little deaths you live.