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The wheels on the bus go round and round, Round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round, All day long. The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish ... The horn on the bus goes beep!   beep!   beep! ... The people on the bus go chat, chat, chat ... The children on the bus bump up and down ...

Imagine having enough left to break a bottle over it. Listen how pretty, listen for glass in nothing nearby shattering, just morning birds that do not wake whoever is not sleeping. Come here Little Birdie,

When black, men drown. They spend their whole lifetimes justifying the gall of springing the trap, the inconvenience of slouched denim, of coupling beyond romance or aim. All the while, the rising murk edges toward their chins. Hurriedly, someone crafts another scientific tome, a giddy exploration of the curious dysfunction identifying black men first as possible, then as necessary. Elegant equations succumb to a river that blurs quotient and theory, rendering them unreadable, and the overwhelm easily disappears the men, their wiry heads glistening, then gulped. All that’s left is the fathers’ last wisdom, soaked wreckage on silver: Girl, that water ain’t nothing but wet. I’m gon’ be alright. When black men drown, their daughters turn to their mothers and ask What should I do with this misnamed shiver in my left shoulder? How should I dress in public? They are weary of standing at the shore, hands shading their eyes, trying to make out their own fathers among the thousands bobbing in the current. The mothers mumble and point to any flailing that seems familiar. Mostly, they’re wrong. Buoyed by church moans and comfort food of meat and cream, the daughters try on other names that sound oddly broken when pressed against the dank syllables of the fathers’. Drained, with just forward in mind, they walk using the hip of only one parent. They scratch in their sleep. Black water wells up in the wound. When black men drown, their daughters are fascinated with the politics of water, how gorgeously a surface breaks to receive, how it weeps so sanely shut. And the thrashing of hands, shrieking of names:I was Otis, I was Willie Earl, they called me Catfish. Obsessed by the waltzing of tides, the daughters remember their fathers—the scorch of beard electrifying the once-in-a-while kiss, the welts in thick arms, eyes wearied with so many of the same days wedged behind them. When black men drown, their daughters memorize all the steps involved in the deluge. They know how long it takes for a weakened man to dissolve. A muted light, in the shape of a little girl, used to be enough to light a daddy’s way home. When black men drown, their daughters drag the water’s floor with rotting nets, pull in whatever still breathes. They insist their still-dripping daddies sit down for cups of insanely sweetened tea, sniffs of rotgut, tangled dinners based on improbable swine. The girls hope to reacquaint their drowned fathers with the concept of body, but outlines slosh in drift and retreat. The men can’t get dry. Parched, they scrub flooded hollows and weep for water to give them name and measure as mere blood once did. Knocking over those spindly-legged dinette chairs, they interrupt the failed feast and mutter Baby girl, gotta go, baby gotta go, their eyes misted with their own murders. Grabbing their girls, they spit out love in reverse and stumble toward the banks of some river. When black men drown their daughters, the rash act is the only plausible response to the brain’s tenacious mouth and its dare:Yes, yes, open your ashed hands and release that wingless child. Note the arc of the sun-drenched nosedive, the first syllable of the child’s name unwilling from the man’s mouth, the melody of billow that begins as blessed clutch. Someone crouching inside the father waits impatiently for the shutting, the lethargic envelop, and wonders if the daughter’s wide and realizing eye will ever close to loose him. It never will, and the man and his child and the daughter and her father gaze calmly into the wrecked science of each other’s lives. The sun struggles to spit a perfect gold upon the quieting splash. The river pulses stylish circles of its filth around the swallow.

Dey is times in life when Nature Seems to slip a cog an' go, Jes' a-rattlin' down creation, Lak an ocean's overflow; When de worl' jes' stahts a-spinnin' Lak a picaninny's top, An' yo' cup o' joy is brimmin' 'Twell it seems about to slop, An' you feel jes' lak a racah, Dat is trainin' fu' to trot— When yo' mammy says de blessin' An' de co'n pone's hot. When you set down at de table, Kin' o' weary lak an' sad, An' you 'se jes' a little tiahed An' purhaps a little mad; How yo' gloom tu'ns into gladness, How yo' joy drives out de doubt When de oven do' is opened, An' de smell comes po'in' out; Why, de 'lectric light o' Heaven Seems to settle on de spot, When yo' mammy says de blessin' An' de co'n pone's hot. When de cabbage pot is steamin' An' de bacon good an' fat, When de chittlins is a-sputter'n' So's to show you whah dey's at; Tek away yo' sody biscuit, Tek away yo' cake an' pie, Fu' de glory time is comin', An' it's 'proachin' mighty nigh, An' you want to jump an' hollah, Dough you know you'd bettah not, When yo' mammy says de blessin' An' de co'n pone's hot. I have hyeahd a' lots o' sermons, An' I've hyeahd o' lots o' prayers, An I've listened to some singin' Dat has tuck me up de stairs Of de Glory-Lan' an' set me Jes' below de Mastah's th'one, An' have lef' my hea't a-singin' In a happy aftah tone; But dem wu'ds so sweetly murmured Seem to tech de softes' spot, When my mammy says de blessin', An' de co'n pone's hot.

When from my counted days I think of times still owed to me by tyrant love, and my temples anticipate a frost beyond the tribulation of my years I see love’s counterfeit joys are a poison reason sips from a glass raised to those for whom hunger dare appear in the guise of my honeyed daydream. What potion of forgetting pleases reason that by neglect of its duty so toils against itself for satisfaction? But my affliction seeks solace, measure of the desire to be remedied and the desire to overcome it love’s remedy ……………………………………………………………… Cuando imagino de mis breves días los muchos que el tirano amor me debe y en mi cabello anticipar la nieve, más que en los años las tristezas mías, veo que son sus falsas alegrías veneno que en cristal la razón bebe por quien el apetito se le atreve vestido de mis dulces fantasías. ¿Qué hierbas del olvido ha dado el gusto a la razón, que sin hacer su oficio quiere contra razón satisfacelle? Mas consolarse quiere mi disgusto, que es el deseo del remedio indicio, y el remedio de amor, querer vencelle. [Lope de Vega, 1562—1635]

In sober mornings do thou not rehearse The holy incantation of a verse; But when that men have both well drunk, and fed, Let my enchantments then be sung, or read. When laurel spurts i' th' fire, and when the hearth Smiles to itself, and gilds the roof with mirth; When up the thyrse is raised, and when the sound Of sacred orgies flies: "A round, a round;" When the rose reigns, and locks with ointments shine, Let rigid Cato read these lines of mine.

When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature. It was soon after my mother died, a brilliant June day, everything blooming. I sat on a gray stone bench in a lovingly planted garden, but the day lilies were as deaf as the ears of drunken sleepers and the roses curved inward. Nothing was black or broken and not a leaf fell and the sun blared endless commercials for summer holidays. I sat on a gray stone bench ringed with the ingenue faces of pink and white impatiens and placed my grief in the mouth of language, the only thing that would grieve with me.

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.

When I am gone what will you do? Who will write and draw for you? Someone smarter—someone new? Someone better—maybe YOU!

The Augsburger walks with Dante through the hell of the departed. He addresses the inconsolable and reports to them that on earth some things have changed. When I’d reported to the couple, thus That up there no one murders now for gain Since no one owns a thing, the faithless spouse Who’d beguiled that woman so improperly Lifted his hand, now tied to hers by chains And looked at her and turned perplexed to me So no one steals, if  there’s no property? I shook my head. And as their hands just touched I saw a blush suffuse the woman’s cheeks. He saw it too and cried, She hasn’t once Shown so much since the day she was seduced! And murmuring, Then there’s no abstinence? They moved off swiftly. And the ties that fused Them tight were of no weight or consequence. Translated from the German