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1Once in Mexico an old man was leading on a string—was it a cat? And we saw it was a tarantula sidling along in the dust, writing a message from God for people who thought they knew where creature-life ended. 2We came upon scenes like that, the world back of a lurid pane of glass. Like in Reno—they have emptied Hollywood and ordered the extras and the stars to go get married and divorced in Reno, making up their stories as they go and letting their little dogs decide which machines or churches to put nickels and dimes into. 3One day in a cut quick to the bone it was white, white; and then the world came in. I got a tourniquet going, but the snow had learned a whole new way to look at the sky, as in Maryland in the red fields, how the stones come startlingly white, on the battlefields, the cemeteries, along the gouged-out roads. There history blows about on dandelion seeds. 4On the plains near Wakeeney, above the ground, short of the earth, at the level of the eyes, a sunset ray extended for miles. We drove along it, and let our thoughts down gingerly to touch what happened, where Genevieve lived. She went out of the world, for death. Her town holds quiet in the big plain. Lights witness one by one all over what still abides. There was no one better. Her town, her town, her town, the tires repeat as we go by. 5For those my friends who want me to know, to discover and combine: all my best thoughts I roll up and let fall carelessly. It is better than no one follow even the pattern I look onto the back of my hand, for many visions I haven’t dared follow may gather and combine in a flash. Away off. in a space in the sky, I let the sky look at me, and I look back and do not say anything.

The planet turns there without you, beautiful. Exiled by death you cannot touch it. Weird joy to watch postulates lived out and discarded, something crowded inside us always craving to become something glistening outside us, the relentless planet showing itself the logic of what is buried inside it. To love existence is to love what is indifferent to you you think, as you watch it turn there, beautiful. World that can know itself only by world, soon it must colonize and infect the stars. You are an hypothesis made of flesh. What you will teach the stars is constant rage at the constant prospect of not-being. • Sometimes when I wake it's because I hear a knock.Knock, Knock. Two knocks, quite clear. I wake and listen. It's nothing.

What she is waiting for never arrives or arrives so slowly she can't see it: Like the river bluing silver and wearing minutely deeper into its channel, the flow hardens to carved stone as she fidgets beneath the whirling fan impatient for the train that rocks us above the water to arrive: Her sisters and brothers gone, she ventures alone through sunlight and moonlight weaving shadowy faces across the peeling walls... —Speeding toward her, is it you and me she spies in the trembling train windows while the engine hauls us down rails that swerve under wheels rolling through her brain? Faces burn through dirty glass, smears of lips and eyes dissolve to spots of darkness swarming between her eyes so that swaying apartment towers crumble as her nostrils prickle from the landfill's ammonia that hangs above the stacked, crushed cars. The rails that take us to her pass boxcar after boxcar like the successive selves we are as she dreams us coming closer, switching track to track: Now the super unbolts her door as she calls: “Oh is it really you?” —the wheel's rolling through her head bringing us face to face with raveled bandages, crutches leaned in dusty corners, terraced mountains of yellowing newspaper. Framed above her chair a picture of a prairie sprawls round a covered wagon and the horse she rode as a girl, her eyes fading points of light... Again she calls out above the train's approaching rumble: “Is it you at last?” My eyes have got so bad peoples’ faces are all blurry...Now tell me, is it really you?” But already the rails are switching, bearing our waving hands away at the speed of thought over the stony waters that ceaselessly pour out.

Fine bitches all, and Molly Dance   ... — Djuna Barnes Come for duty’s sake (as girls do) we watch The sly very old woman wile away from her pious And stagger-blind friend, their daily split of gin. She pours big drinks. We think of what Has crumpled, folded, slumped her flesh in And muddied her once tumbling blood that, young, Sped her, threaded with brave power: a Tower, Now Babel, then of  ivory, of  the Shulamite, Collapsed to this keen dame moving among Herself. She hums, she plays with used bright Ghosts, makes real dolls, and drinking sings Come here My child, and feel it, dear. A crooking finger Shows how hot the oven is. (Also she is alive with hate. Also she is afraid of  hell. Also, we wish We might, illiberal, uncompassionate, Run from her smell, her teeth in the dish.) Even dying, her life riots in her. We stand stock still Though aswarm with itches under her disreputable smiles. We manage to mean well. We endure, and more. We learn time’s pleasure, catch our future and its cure. We’re dear blood daughters to this every hag, and near kin To any after this of  those our mirrors tell us foolishly envy us, Presuming us, who are young, to be beautiful, kind, and sure. Originally appeared in the March 1958 issue of Poetry magazine.

“Fine bitches all, and Molly Dance...” —Djuna Barnes Come for duty’s sake (as girls do) we watch The sly very old woman wile away from her pious And stagger-blind friend, their daily split of gin. She pours big drinks. We think of what Has crumpled, folded, slumped her flesh in And muddied her once tumbling blood that, young, Sped her, threaded with brave power: a Tower, Now Babel, then of ivory, of the Shulamite, Collapsed to this keen dame moving among Herself. She hums, she plays with used bright Ghosts, makes real dolls, and drinking sings Come here My child, and feeling it, dear. A crooking finger Shows how hot the oven is. (Also she is alive with hate. Also she is afraid of hell. Also, we wish We might, illiberal, uncompassionate, Run from her smell, her teeth in the dish.) Even dying, her life riots in her. We stand stock still Though aswarm with itches under her disreputable smiles. We manage to mean well. We endure, and more. We learn time’s pleasure, catch our future and its cure. We’re dear blood daughters to this every hag, and near kin To any after this of those our mirrors tell us foolishly envy us, Presuming us, who are young, to be beautiful, kind, and sure. March 1958

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds; While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap, When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow, Gave a lustre of midday to objects below, When what to my wondering eyes did appear, But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer, With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now,Dasher! now,Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen! On,Comet! on,Cupid! on,Donner and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall! Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!" As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the housetop the coursers they flew With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too— And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack. His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself; A wink of his eye and a twist of his head Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread; He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, And laying his finger aside of his nose, And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose; He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, And away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight— “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

A flashlight rolls over the walls of a cave, searching, until the transducer comes to a halt low on my still-flat belly. The doctor says, "There's definitely a kid in there." Easy for her to say—she sees this all day. But it took us years to get to this point. Years in the dark. Months of nothing and never. Her expert eye interprets the grainy screen, which I can't stop reaching toward, pretending to point to features but really just longing to touch the image, as if it were somehow more there than in me, this tiny, blurry, leaping bison or bear, something from Altamira or Lascaux, from the hand of an ancestor— the first art we know.

Walking past the open window, she is surprised by the song of the white-throated sparrow and stops to listen. She has been thinking of the dead ones she loves--her father who lived over a century, and her oldest son, suddenly gone at forty-seven--and she can't help thinking she has called them back, that they are calling her in the voices of these birds passing through Ohio on their spring migration. . . because, after years of summers in upstate New York, the white-throat has become something like the family bird. Her father used to stop whatever he was doing and point out its clear, whistling song. She hears it again: "Poor Sam Peabody Peabody Peabody." She tries not to think, "Poor Andy," but she has already thought it, and now she is weeping. But then she hears another, so clear, it's as if the bird were in the room with her, or in her head, telling her that everything will be all right. She cannot see them from her second-story window-- they are hidden in the new leaves of the old maple, or behind the white blossoms of the dogwood-- but she stands and listens, knowing they will stay for only a few days before moving on.

His body ahead Of him on the bed He faces his feet Sees himself dead, A corpse complete With legs and chest And belly between Swelling the scene Of the crime you left, Taking your time, Angel of Death

In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle celebrate Pullman embedded lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float in an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned in a triangle of trees swims dappled with leaf shadow, sketched light arch within arch delicate as fingernail moons. The green doors should not be locked. Doors of fern and flower should not be shut. Louis Sullivan, I sit on your grave. It is not now good weather for prophets. Sun eddies on the steelsmoke air like sinking honey. On the inner green door of the Getty tomb (a thighbone's throw from your stone) a marvel of growing, blooming, thrusting into seed: how all living wreathe and insinuate in the circlet of repetition that never repeats: ever new birth never rebirth. Each tide pool microcosm spiraling from your hand. Sullivan, you had another five years when your society would give you work. Thirty years with want crackling in your hands. Thirty after years with cities flowering and turning grey in your beard. All poets are unemployed nowadays. My country marches in its sleep. The past structures a heavy mausoleum hiding its iron frame in masonry. Men burn like grass while armies grow. Thirty years in the vast rumbling gut of this society you stormed to be used, screamed no louder than any other breaking voice. The waste of a good man bleeds the future that's come in Chicago, in flat America, where the poor still bleed from the teeth, housed in sewers and filing cabinets, where prophets may spit into the wind till anger sleets their eyes shut, where this house that dances the seasons and the braid of all living and the joy of a man making his new good thing is strange, irrelevant as a meteor, in Chicago, in flat America in this year of our burning.