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Down in a green and shady bed, A modest violet grew, Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, As if to hide from view. And yet it was a lovely flower, Its colours bright and fair; It might have graced a rosy bower, Instead of hiding there, Yet there it was content to bloom, In modest tints arrayed; And there diffused its sweet perfume, Within the silent shade. Then let me to the valley go, This pretty flower to see; That I may also learn to grow In sweet humility.

A black satin purse in her right hand, condoms, spermicide, her key to the birdcage elevator. All night, thunder and rain in a flash of lightning, his hands visible, leaves of philodendron, a half-moon table. They talk in near dark, eating from a basket. She places her hand in his lap, opens her legs as if God came from her, fragrance pluming like smoke. All night, his tongue like a fish philodendron green smoothing half-light. Now the bridge is illuminated, twin arches rising, chalky, incandescent, light abandoning the dome of sky, river breathing azure, its surface frazzled, the moon leaving her scuff marks. Near the open window, dark of leaves. Outside at dawn, the sun hidden, a crow lowering itself on black wings crosses before windows as gold as Rome. The telephone, her mouth open. I can see all the way into you, he says. Leaves of philodendron pour from the table.

He never saw a violin. But he saw a lifetime of violence. This is not to presume That if he had simply seen A violin he would have seen Less violence. Or that living among Violins, as though they were Boulangeries or toppling stacks Of other glazed goods like young adult Fiction, would have made the violence Less crack and more cocaine, Less of course and more why god oh why. More of one thing Doesn’t rhyme with one thing. A swill of stars doesn’t rhyme With star. A posse of poets doesn’t rhyme With poet. We are all in prison. This is the brutal lesson of the 21st century, Swilled like a sour stone Through the vein of the beast Who watches you while you eat; Our eternal host, the chummed fiddler, The better tomorrow, MMXVI.

And now the heavens shift and the night comes in, And covers with its darkness earth and sky And the tricks of the Myrmidons. Throughout the city The Trojans, wearied by joy, lie fast asleep. And now the Greeks set out from Tenedos, Their ships proceeding in an ordered line, Under the friendly light of the silent moon, Making their way toward the shore they know so well, And when the royal galley’s beacon light Is lighted, Sinon sees it, and quietly goes, Protected by malign complicit fates, And furtively opens up the Horse’s flank And frees the Argive warriors from its womb. The Horse releases them to the open air And joyfully they come out: first come the captains Thessander, and Sthenelus, and dire Ulysses, Lowering themselves to the ground by means of a rope, And Acamas and Thoas, and Pyrrhus, Achilles’ son, And Machaon the prince, and Menelaus, And Epeus, he, who contrived the Wooden Horse That fooled us so. And then they enter the city, That’s deep submerged in wine and unknowing sleep; They surprise and kill the watch, and open the gates To welcome in their comrades from the fleet, Letting them in for what they are going to do.

Her unawed face, whose pose so long assumed Is touched with what reality we feel, Bends to itself and, to itself resumed, Restores a tender fiction to the real. And in her artful posture movement lies Whose timeless motion flesh must so conceal; Yet what her pose conceals we might surmise And might pretend to gather from her eyes The final motion flesh gives up to art. But slowly, if we watch her long enough, The nerves grow subtler, and she moves apart Into a space too dim with time and blood For our set eyes to follow true enough, Or nerves to guess about her, if they would.

The conversations of the French Quarter mules in their stables after a full day of pulling tourists and voters over cobble- stones is not espresso witty and in their dark no TVs feed them news of the ends of mules elsewhere in the Middle East and West. In our stables the ends of others are a fact of atmosphere. The yoyos on the mystery island nextdoor are revving familiar tools in backyard now gripped by failure first of electricity than of a meaner something that’ll grow into nothing we’ll know in the A.M. Once they were visitors like us then they grew mulish in their bubbles and pulled whatever was put around their necks in- cluding a banner that said, About What Kills Us We Know Little. On certain nights after a good internal fight we hear the voice- less others through the glass fearfully sweet’n’soft like dough. Oh let the monsters in. Help us rise above our not seeing them, may they let us into their eyes as well. Banish the blindness of these cobblestones, clop, clop. But! Pffsst! Our notes are in- complete. Loving you was never on the agenda. Better to sing as roughly as the stones. On Memorial Day we had one thousand hotdogs & counting. Didn’t visit a single graveyard. We the Grant Wood folks scan the sky for incoming missiles: blips ourselves we understand timing and touring in America. The gilded dads in the portraits sought the idealized continuity now moving before us democratically in showers of pixels and dots. I’ll go with the distracted mariner, my lover, and we’ll be in the world. It will be late by then and dark. We lyric virgin mules keep our book of hours in a dream apart, having stranded a billion turistas. But we could not break the chummy hand. Ready to brave the snow without a hat, severe weather notwithstanding, we merely nod and understand.

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost With the least shade of thought to sin allied. Woman! above all women glorified, Our tainted nature's solitary boast; Purer than foam on central ocean tost; Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast; Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween, Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend, As to a visible Power, in which did blend All that was mixed and reconciled in thee Of mother's love with maiden purity, Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately. I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness, For my surrounding air hath a new lightness; Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther; As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness. Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her. No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour, Soft as spring wind that’s come from birchen bowers. Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches, As winter’s wound with her sleight hand she staunches, Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour: As white their bark, so white this lady’s hours.

One must be brave to live through a day. What remains is nothing but the pleasure of longing—very precious. Longing purifies as does flying, strengthens as does an effort, it fashions the soul as work fashions the belly. It is like an athlete, like a runner who will never stop running. And this gives him endurance. Longing is nourishing for the strong. It is like a window on a high tower, through which blows the wind of strength. Longing, Virginity of happiness.

I wish my frank and open face Held just one tiny little trace Of something that approaches guile. I'd like an enigmatic smile And heavy-lidded eyes instead Of just a regulation head.