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Everything looped, spiraled, circular (thought) But the labyrinth’s not a maze but a singular way to strike “the profoundest chord” across aspire Those who enter the labyrinth can leave (pilgrims sometime don’t) (Elle did not) Inside the largest circle (the labyrinth itself) splits into equal parts (demi-arcs or waves) No, silly, Elle whispers,petals If measured through the centre of the petals there should be two parts for each petal and one for the entry, but calculations from the measurements show that this is not so. The difference is about ½”. There is no way around this problem. We must seek a solution to the geometry of petals, the consequential mystery of Elle’s message: I was sick and am not healed.     I am not blind but dead.     I am not dead but silenced.     Alone, in love.

Wearing a tawny lion pelt upon My spindly shoulders I carry both of them, My father and my mother, into the darkness, My father hoarsely singing, “They are there!” —The glimmer of something that is glimmering there— “I see the glow of weapons in the shadows!” Through which with my purblind eyes I think I see Something in the darkness waiting there. Above me in the dark my mother’s voice Calls down to me, “Who’s there? Who is it there?” Step after step together we make our way, In the darkness of my memory of our house.

On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery. You also, our first great, Had tried all ways; Tested and pried and worked in many fashions, And this much gives me heart to play the game. Here is a part that's slight, and part gone wrong, And much of little moment, and some few Perfect as Dürer! "In the Studio" and these two portraits,* if I had my choice I And then these sketches in the mood of Greece? You had your searches, your uncertainties, And this is good to know—for us, I mean, Who bear the brunt of our America And try to wrench her impulse into art. You were not always sure, not always set To hiding night or tuning "symphonies"; Had not one style from birth, but tried and pried And stretched and tampered with the media. You and Abe Lincoln from that mass of dolts Show us there's chance at least of winning through. * "Brown and Gold—de Race." "Grenat et Or—Le Pettt Cardinal."

For Harry Cobb Soon I’ll move to Norway. If that’s a bitter pill, well, swill, swallow. I’m going, and I won’t wallow, not in Norway, where they’re so beyond slave labor, with laws that say a clerk must work within five meters of a window through which she can see a tree and by that tree be seen. My mind’s made up. I will be Norwegian with Norwegian trees. I’ll be seer and be seen. It’s a scenic scene, it’s how it goes, I’m going. Tell the top brass, if they ask, I don’t give a damn about their asses. But I will miss the beeches and the ashes. It’s not their fault I’m leaving. They’re only trees, and leaving, I’m Norwegian.

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may return: Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar: Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude: In honoured poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,— Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

There is a strain to read among the hills, The old and full of voices — by the source Of some free stream, whose gladdening presence fills The solitude with sound; for in its course Even such is thy deep song, that seems a part Of those high scences, a fountain from the heart. Or its calm spirit fitly may be taken To the still breast in sunny garden bowers, Where vernal winds each tree’s low tones awaken, And bud and bell with changes mark the hours. There let thy thoughts be with me, while the day Sinks with a golden and serene decay. Or by some hearth where happy faces meet, When night hath hushed the woods, with all their birds, There, from some gentle voice, that lay were sweet As antique music, linked with household words; While in pleased murmurs woman’s lip might move, And the raised eye of childhood shine in love. Or where the shadows of dark solemn yews Brood silently o’er some lone burial-ground, Thy verse hath power that brightly might diffuse A breath, a kindling, as of spring, around; From its own glow of hope and courage high, And steadfast faith’s victorious constancy. True bard and holy! — thou art e’en as one Who, by some secret gift of soul or eye, In every spot beneath the smiling sun, Sees where the springs of living waters lie; Unseen awhile they sleep — till, touched by thee, Bright healthful waves flow forth, to each glad wanderer free.

Beginning on a line by Silvio Rodríguez How will it taste—the beer the gravedigger will drink after bestowing your dirt coat? What will he say—you keeled the outrigger too south, & when the breakers rolled, no boats heard your Mayday? & will he ask his friends at the bar—if someone calls a Mayday & there is no one at the other end of any radio, did Kevin A. González really exist? O second person, what would you do without you? Where would Kevin A. González hide? Our bond is over. The red of the rockets’ glare has faded. Your grave has been dug. Gone too are the days when I tried to speak through you.

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut That will solve a murder case unsolved for years Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window Through which he saw her head, connecting with Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years; For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from The big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us; I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields Always, to be near you, even in my heart When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to The place where I again think of you, a new Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow Of a ship which sails From Hartford to Miami, and I love you Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun Receives me in the questions which you always pose.

Again this morning my eyes woke up too close to your eyes, their almost green orbs too heavy-lidded to really look back. To wake up next to you is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you to see you. But I do look. So when you come to me in your opulent sadness, I see you do not want me to unbutton you so I cannot do the one thing I can do. Now it is almost one a.m. I am still at my desk and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase away from me. Already it is years of you a staircase away from me. To be near you and not near you is ordinary. You are ordinary. Still, how many afternoons have I spent peeling blue paint from our porch steps, peering above hedgerows, the few parked cars for the first glimpse of you. How many hours under the overgrown, pink Camillas, thinking the color was wrong for you, thinking you'd appear after my next blink. Soon you'll come down the stairs to tell me something. And I'll say, okay. Okay. I'll say it like that, say it just like that, I'll go on being your never-enough. It's not the best in you I long for. It's when you're noteless, numb at the ends of my fingers, all is all. I say it is.

I leave you in your garden. In the yard Behind it, run the Airedales you have reared With boxer’s vigilance and poet’s rigour: Dog-generations you have trained the vigour That few can breed to train and fewer still Control with the deliberate human will. And in the house there rest, piled shelf on shelf, The accumulations that compose the self— Poem and history: for if we use Words to maintain the actions that we choose, Our words, with slow defining influence, Stay to mark out our chosen lineaments. Continual temptation waits on each To renounce his empire over thought and speech, Till he submit his passive faculties To evening, come where no resistance is; The unmotivated sadness of the air Filling the human with his own despair. Where now lies power to hold the evening back? Implicit in the grey is total black: Denial of the discriminating brain Brings the neurotic vision, and the vein Of necromancy. All as relative For mind as for the sense, we have to live In a half-world, not ours nor history’s, And learn the false from half-true premisses. But sitting in the dusk—though shapes combine, Vague mass replacing edge and flickering line, You keep both Rule and Energy in view, Much power in each, most in the balanced two: Ferocity existing in the fence Built by an exercised intelligence. Though night is always close, complete negation Ready to drop on wisdom and emotion, Night from the air or the carnivorous breath, Still it is right to know the force of death, And, as you do, persistent, tough in will, Raise from the excellent the better still.