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. . . I drank and was surprised to see what looked like tea leaves at the bottom of the cup . . . minutes later a great warm green wave or cloud began advancing towards me. “Look at the boats on his shirt,” I felt myself trying to say, in Spanish, or Moroccan, yet knowing I knew none of the words . . . it was bright morning, and the train had arrived and emptied at Chamartín before I finally pried open my eyes, and saw on the carriage floor nothing but an unfamiliar pair of trainers: cracked white leather, with three green stripes. “Mister — or rather Herr — Adolf Dassler made these,” I thought. But which of the two friendly men with whom I’d shared the carriage, and some wine, had been wearing them? I pondered this awhile, then fell asleep again . . . and did Herr Dassler visit, personally, all the cities inscribed on his trainers? Koln, Dublin, Paris, Montreal, Kopenhagen, Bern, Amsterdam . . . and fit the trainer to the city? Rom, like these, Vienna, London . . . Señor Dassler, I am dreaming of you on a bench on a platform in a train station in Madrid, unable to wake up, a pair of your trainers, that weren’t mine, but now are, on my feet . . . I am swimming, Herr Dassler, in your wake, though I fear you are dead, a corpse washed clean by the numbing tides with three slanting stripes emblazoned on your chest, your passport and your wallet drifting to the ocean floor . . . I discovered in a pocket — oh! the kindness of strangers! — about forty pesetas; but casting around for a joke or silver lining, I found nada— or niente, as I put it to my shoes . . . closing my eyes, I imagined fingers untying and easing off my Reeboks, as the train hurtled through the darkness, the men trying them on in turn, the ex-owner of these flexing his toes, padding up and down, nodding approval. They must have whispered like parents, as they lifted my shirt and unfastened my money belt, or perhaps, more like surgeons, they used scissors, or a knife . . . snicker-snack! I watched the vorpal blade trace arabesques across my breastbone, hover, then slide between two ribs.Chug-chug went the trains. The heat was building, the potion at last wearing off. How light I’d be, I now began to reason, as quick and canny as a lizard, a perfectly camouflaged lizard, who’d shed a skin and acquired a new way of walking.

Unreal precision of the houses at first light

Of Mina-sarpilili-anda II, the only surviving record is this splendid bas-relief in which he presses the neck of his Hittite foe beneath one battle-shod foot while minions shoulder the spoils of a conquered city. In fact there was no war that year; a bored stone-carver was looking for preferment. He received an allowance of good wine. In a perfumed cloud of dust that loitered over the plain, Hittite ambassadors came to the king with golden bells and rosewater candy, birds in cages and spotted cats, and departed in peace. The king was beloved, laughed often, feared nothing, and died in his bed of poison. A carnelian image of his second-best wife, accurate to the last mole, was plucked from the dirt by a boy tending goats, sold, and spirited out of the country, rolled in a rug, on a ship that sank on a cloudless day. An image of his first wife, in chrysoprase, lies tightly packed in buried rubble for the next generation of archaeologists— should they prove worthy, persistent, and slyer than goatherds.

A great crime: she has plunged a dagger into the heart of her mother. Strange. The strangest thing: a mocking little pride with a sinister click as of a fitting together of bad pieces. Beyond knowing. The mesmerist’s only child. A certain indication of anemia, too much candy, and her charming eyes. A privilege to be near her. My inspiriation. I risk an approach, what I call “the light of day.” Movements, with perfect indifference, turn place and shrink.One might have seen less:

There is no stillness in this wood. The quiet of this clearing Is the denial of my hearing The sounds I should. There is no vision in this glade. This tower of sun revealing The timbered scaffoldage is stealing Essence from shade. Only my love is love’s ideal. The love I could discover In these recesses knows no lover, Is the unreal, The undefined, unanalysed, Unabsolute many; It is antithesis of any, In none comprised.

There is a company called Marathon Oil, mother, Very far away and very big and, again, very Desirable. Who isn’t? Back connecting pure dots, Fleecy intelligence lapped in explanatory sound The faces make difficult. Learn the language. That beautiful tongue-in-cheek hostage situation: My mind, up close, in pjs, and I use it. Wanting to fuck an abstraction nine times in a row, Continuous melismata, don’t stop, don’t stop, no name, no picture. There is a series of solids, mother, Called people, who rise to the transparent obtainable Solo windows, mornings, afternoons, And there are military operations called Operation Patio, Operation Menu. It is the individuals who finally get the feel of the tenses. So that it may snow, has to snow on the muddy corpse. There is a boundary, mother, very far away and very Continuous, broken, to interrogate civilians, the self, The text, networks of viewers found wanting a new way To cook chicken, why not?, to kill while falling asleep. There is the one language not called money, and the other not called explosions.

Unstable dream, according to the place, Be steadfast once, or else at least be true. By tasted sweetness make me not to rue The sudden loss of thy false feignèd grace. By good respect in such a dangerous case Thou broughtest not her into this tossing mew But madest my sprite live, my care to renew, My body in tempest her succour to embrace. The body dead, the sprite had his desire, Painless was th'one, th'other in delight. Why then, alas, did it not keep it right, Returning, to leap into the fire? And where it was at wish, it could not remain, Such mocks of dreams they turn to deadly pain.

Pure veins of bogus blue-blood and such fancy hungers ~ In the end no surprise of reports of you dying younger than your gods ~ Kicked back in the classic toilet scene ~ With a spike in your arm and twelve large in pocket ~ Thanks to a lucky day scamming the dumb Social Services folks ~ It’s a human thing, pants at your ankles, leaving unclean ~ Because life’s road is only one night in a bad motel ~ Harry, you could play basketball in your bare feet, and win ~ You could name all the provinces of Canada ~ And simultaneously scour the Social Register ~ For the names of those sad and silly girls you wanted to get right ~ You relished autumn leaves and ignited inglorious schemes ~ Deconstructing the idea of prep-school Friday sunsets ~ In lavish October, stealing among faculty hors d’oeuvres and sherry ~ All the while creating your own hooligan oeuvre ~ With your others off to Yale, Colgate, Brown ~ Night after night, alone in L.A. ~ Seeking better quotas, vistas, cushion, heroin ~ And that last tricky exit to the Santa Monica Freeway ~ In one more borrowed car with one more borrowed fiction ~ Oh yes, you must have been laughing ~ And spitting back at the boldface of Pacific wind ~ Cruising the left coast on sheer gall ~ But mostly, at 3 a.m. , in the local playground, Harry ~ You played solitary ball ~ And dreamed of final seconds in a distant game ~ You drove to the sacred bucket with a fury ~ Slick crossover dribble, and then burst to the pull-up jumper ~ No harm, no foul, nothing but net. ~ But all alone, in the heart of West Hollywood, Harry, ~ You jerk, you bricked the last shot.

My garden is the wild Sea of the grass. Her garden Shelters between walls. The tide could break in; I should be sorry for this. There is peace there of a kind, Though not the deep peace Of wild places. Her care For green life has enabled The weak things to grow. Despite my first love, I take sometimes her hand, Following straight paths Between flowers, the nostril Clogged with their thick scent. The old softness of lawns Persuading the slow foot Leads to defection; the silence Holds with its gloved hand The wild hawk of the mind. But not for long, windows, Opening in the trees Call the mind back To its true eyrie; I stoop Here only in play.

Lord, when you send the rain think about it, please, a little? Do not get carried away by the sound of falling water, the marvelous light on the falling water. I am beneath that water. It falls with great force and the light Blinds me to the light.