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In the early contact period, New England Indian wampum consisted of small tubular-shaped shells drilled and strung as beads. — Alfred A. Cave The breaking of clouds begins with seizure. A man grabs another, reasons ransom. A murder averted in the thing’s scheme. A cape’s shell transformed, more than one supposed. What stands behind this? Enemy or friend? (Yes, they can be both. Don’t you think I know?) List: Dutch. Indian. Pequot. Puritan. List: Then. War. Event. Now. History. List. The shell buys glories of iron and pelt. Wampum is dismissed. Joke. Sneer. Currency of the disappeared whose children live still. List: Blessing. Curse. Wife. Slave. Savior. Savage. The shells make their noise. The robbed graves cradle. He who brings food to the starving gets cooked.

In the Egyptian café in London, I drank coffee with men smoking hookah. Draw in, breathe out. The cup was small, the coffee harsh. I had to catch a train from Marble Arch. A still point, Byzantine, one star in a galaxy of trillions, I had to find my friends. Who cares what happened? I moved like a bat, darted, skittered towards the river. An old lady inching towards her complex screamed when I tried to help her with her walker. It was my life. The rooftops fracture. If I hadn’t jostled the mosaic maybe I could stop the picture. Buildings of stirred beach glass. Cresting sunsets comb the face, refine the land. The world goes sad. Like now? Like now. Even the ancients felt slips, skips in experience plotted as mathematical fact.

And like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The moon arose up in the murky East, A white and shapeless mass.

She wants a house full of cups and the ghosts of last century’s lesbians; I want a spotless apartment, a fast computer.  She wants a woodstove, three cords of ash, an axe; I want a clean gas flame.  She wants a row of jars: oats, coriander, thick green oil; I want nothing to store.  She wants pomanders, linens, baby quilts, scrapbooks.  She wants Wellesley reunions.  I want gleaming floorboards, the river’s reflection.  She wants shrimp and sweat and salt; she wants chocolate.  I want a raku bowl, steam rising from rice.  She wants goats, chickens, children.  Feeding and weeping.  I want wind from the river freshening cleared rooms. She wants birthdays, theaters, flags, peonies. I want words like lasers.  She wants a mother’s tenderness.  Touch ancient as the river. I want a woman’s wit swift as a fox. She’s in her city, meeting her deadline; I’m in my mill village out late with the dog, listening to the pinging wind bells, thinking of the twelve years of wanting, apart and together. We’ve kissed all weekend; we want to drive the hundred miles and try it again.

When I was twelve, I wanted a macaw but they cost hundreds of dollars. If we win the lottery? I asked. Macaws weren’t known to be great talkers, but they were affectionate. Yes, my mother said.If we win the lottery. I was satisfied, so long as it wasn’t impossible. The macaw would be blue.

I need a strict manager and an energetic secretary and a correspondent to make my coffee and my tea I need an intellectual and a poet and a mafia godfather to divide my life among them And I’ll announce, after a while my bankruptcy like the companies do I need a servant and a traitor a lover to have me murdered beaten to death by sandals in the bath: I need a queen to betray me with the king

Two musics washing over me, and morning asks, which loneliness comes closest to the inky chromatics inside you?

Luis Buñuel A white bull, a cassock, an antique mirror The famous ones have passed hours in front of, A midnight blue tuxedo, a fainting couch, a key To a box of lewd photographs, a swastika, Twelve bales of hay, three grave plots, a statue Of Christ holding a heart pierced by a dagger, A black patch, all kinds of utensils for the sick— Including thirty-nine feet of catheter tubing, A houseboat, a dog, a baby grand, an oar Said to have been carved from a lovely river And a woman’s hat by Alfred Jarry, a mattress, A shotgun, a diving helmet, an essay on The Art Of Taxidermy and a clitoris mounted on a ring Like quartz, a crescent wrench, a bulldozer.

No one grumbles among the oyster clans, And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer. Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want Heaven to be, and God to come, again. There is no end to our grumbling; we want Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven. But the heron standing on one leg in the bog Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.

One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled.  And the prince inquired of him, “What has befallen you?”  And the man replied, “O prince, I am by profession a thief, and this night, because there was no moon, I went to rob the money-changer’s shop, and as I climbed in through the window I made a mistake and entered the weaver’s shop, and in the dark I ran into the weaver’s loom and my eye was plucked out.  And now, O prince, I ask for justice upon the weaver.” Then the prince sent for the weaver and he came, and it was decreed that one of his eyes should be plucked out. “O prince,” said the weaver, “the decree is just.  It is right that one of my eyes be taken.  And yet, alas! both are necessary to me in order that I may see the two sides of the cloth that I weave. But I have a neighbour, a cobbler, who has also two eyes, and in his trade both eyes are not necessary.” Then the prince sent for the cobbler.  And he came.  And they took out one of the cobbler’s two eyes. And justice was satisfied.