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Family dinner night, and we are deciding what to save: polar bears or slipper limpets. Girls in Afghanistan or the wolf. We can't save everything but the kids are ready with their banks, the season's extra, the not- ice cream. How does the Afghan girl feel to make our list? We bring more and more money to the table but the list outruns it. My mother comes in from visiting a friend in hospice, sick from all the chemo. When I get whatever it is, she says, I want you to do nothing. It's only May and already they've declared a statewide drought. Yesterday I hiked over a river that was not there. Coral reefs, my son says, that's what I want to save. And so we do. Whatever is happening to us is deductible. Silence of the was-river, was-bear. In the movies everyone is building some kind of ark.

(1) Nothing that exists can be temporal; still I come to lay this stick upon these altars, those three definitions of sun, the border and thick measure of lost perfection. Sun must acknowledge this state, an iconic message, abrupt invention of death; we shall call it an accomplishment, or a causal relation. The mask measures my intent on a patch of earth, a spent measure, a return, that red unruly seat of the dead. (2) Could the Cusan speak of love as a return, a plentitude of absence, an imprecise count of the dark from which he would always turn? The binukedine know how to entice the expansive energy flowing from grace, an absolute measure, a stellar device. I would propose a failed sun, a sacrifice that spins an ambiguous body in time, in trust to a sacred field, death's other price. Call this, too, an intrinsic order, a rhyme of resuscitated bodies, pure, sublime in their perturbative intent, a concern of rhythms and designs set upon an urn. (3) This must be what is the case, nani in the manifold, dannu, milestone, the embrace of albarga mask, the cold design the solstice will prove. Nothing under law will hold. What established light will move or change the structure of light, light an order to disprove? Speak of the possible mask, of its finite correlation to love, the logical slight derivation and mark of corrupted space, that fugitive event that will leave no trace. (4) Bogged in a bone order, syntax and substance of the passing world, I place my duge in the fragile arms of silence. So much for the quick embrace of the ceasing instant, the chaste argument only the dead can efface. Say that I have written my absolute descent and stable transformation through a sounding tone to one that now is spent. Praise this instant collation, paradox and migration of souls without assurance or the due gift of distance.

Can't tell your oh from your ah? Go, go or else go ga-ga. What, were you born in a barn? Oh. Ah. What do you say when the dentist asks? No novacaine? Nah. Then joke's on us, Jack: we gnaw ourselves when we really ought to know. Can't tell the force from the farce, nor our cores from our cars. The horde works hard in this new nation of shopkeeps, moles in malls, minding our stores when we should be minding our stars. Harmony, whoremoney—can we even tell the showman from the shaman? Or are we the worst kind of   tourists, doing La France in low fronts, sporting shorts at Chartres and so alone in our élan? Nope. We're Napoleons of nowhere, hopeless going on hapless, unable to tell our Elbas from our elbows.

in my mouth is as fat as a cow’s tongue, still I want to ask the woman at the next table what she’s saying into her phone. A tongue, a cow’s tongue tastes like the rest of the cow.Cow tastes like cow, an aunt once said in an accent as sweet as Arkansas dirt. Someone, in English, told me I don’t carry my vowels like anyone they know. I’ve tried, but my tongue won’t move like my aunt’s nor like anyone else’s in my family. I ain’t makin’ sense, they’d say if they were me. Why don’t I talk like us anymore? Anyway...Every other word, the woman slips into English. The way a train window trades a dead city for a dead suburb; a posh row for a cow pasture.Duct cleaning, Thai Bistro,

I have arrived here after taking many steps Over the kitchen floors of friends and through their lives. The dun-colored hills have been good to me And the gold rivers. I have loved chrysantheumums, and children: I have been grandmother to some. In one pocket I have hidden chocolates from you And knives. Speaking my real thoughts to no one In bars and at lecterns I have told the truth Fairly often, but hardly ever to myself. I have not cried out against the crimes of my country But I have protected myself, I have watched from a safe corner The rape of mountains, the eagle’s reckless plunge. Ever since high school I have waved goodbye to history: I have assisted you to grow In all ways that were convenient to me. What is a block vote against steam shovels? My current events teacher was a fine man But his moral precepts were a put-up job and I followed them. Well-dressed, in my new Adidas At every gathering I investigated my psyche with friends And they investigated theirs with me. But whenever Trouble came in the front door I ran out the back And fell into the pit of my bones. Escaped from those burning buildings, the past, What balance can any of us hope for? I was comparing lipsticks The day Nagasaki vanished. The day Solzhenitsyn disappeared into the Gulag I was attending a cocktail party. Perhaps there are only ashes in my handbag. A man at the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street Tried to sweep me into a trash barrel and I almost agreed. Already the dried blood was sifting along my wrists. Already my own hands Were tightening around my throat But Sorrow saved me, Sorrow gave me an image Of bombs like human tears watering the world’s gardens. How could I not answer? Since then I have been planting words In every windowbox, poking them to grow up. What’s God, That he should be mindful of me? Sometimes I feel like wood Waiting for someone to peel me. Indeed I have been lukewarm At heart, which is all that matters. Of tiny bread-colored atoms, Equal fragments equally dispersed That love each other and are never hungry. What have I ever ignited That warmed anyone? I have not followed the rivers. Dangerous as a pine needle Packed in among others, in the dense multitudes And dry timbers of the West I am afraid of greed, The rich taste of it, the anger Hidden in my pockets. Columns of smoke on the horizon, Pillars of green fire. But I have arrived here somehow, Neither have I stopped talking. Numberless are the kitchens I have sat in, Chewing my fingers, trying to say something, Anything, so that the daughters of men should see As many sides of themselves as possible. Word after word my footprints Have stumbled across deserts. How should I escape them? They keep following after me. A little wind stirs itself, Whisks across my eyelids, And I know what it is before I say it: What if the world really articulates itself In the socket of a human knee? God save me From the swamps of hubris but it may be, it may be. Before the idea, the impulse. I feel it moving in me, it is there Arthritic but still powerful, a seizure Delicate as grasshoppers, a light Gathering in the skull. Between thumb and forefinger And the ballbearing joints of the tongue In soft, glottal convulsions Out of no alien skies But out of the mind’s muscle The hieroglyph figures rise. The little histories of words Cannot be eaten. I know it, you know it And the children... But the images we make are our own. In the cool caves of the intellect The twisted roots of them lead us Backwards and then forwards. If only we could understand What’s in our pockets is for everyone! I have a dictionary in one hand, a mirror. Strangers look at themselves in it, Tracing the expressions they use From one family to the next They comfort themselves, murmuring The tongues we speak are a blizzard Of words like warm wool flying: In the shy conjugal rites Of verb, consonant, vowel, In the dark mucosal flesh lining The prismed underside of the skin Each one is a spark sheared From the veined fleece of the spirit Of the looking-glass body we live in. It is the one I have been cherishing, The one all of us speak from, For the world as we know it moves Necessarily by steps. Breath, pulse beat, ten digital stops. At the foot of the mountains I look up. Does God Lift up His hand to cover them? Blinded by tears like rain My bones turn granite, the spine of the hills congeals them. Where is the eye of the storm, Or where is the center of my seeing? The wind of my breath is a hurricane: I am locked inside myself. Painfully, up the bald stepladder I climb, But sometimes the light in my head goes on More like the sun than a match. Just as they said in Arabia There’s a huge pantalooned angel swelling Inside the body’s glass jar. The white-haired thread of steam From the teakettle on the range whistles And sharpens itself into a voice Bodiless as history, invisible But still whispering in ears That keep trying to hear it. It is as if midgets were bellowing their names Down sets of cardboard cylinders. But we have not disappeared Yet. My friends, we have said many things to each other In new combinations, seed upon seed exploding And blossoming in kitchen gardens. I confess I am ashamed of myself: I have not tried hard enough to understand Or listen to you speak. But the Word is mindful of itself And always has been. Littering every street In the sly eyes of tin cans, Drops of water in the gutter The world looks back at us From every known language: Yoruba, Hebrew, Chinese, Arrogant English, the subject Subjecting all to its desires, Even the softer tongues, romantic Self-reflexive, done to As we would be done by, Whatever life we cultivate Out of the animal moans of childhood It is all wheat fields, all grass Growing and being grown. With poisoned bread in my pockets, or gumdrops, Or armies like Myrmidons rising What I say is true For a time only, thank God, If I have only arrived anywhere it is to look Carefully, at all I thought I knew. In living rivers of speech The reflections I make are my own And yet not: Though the old growth rings are hidden from us And the echoing tomorrows of the acorn, The warm currents of the senses Are a two-way street, my friends: The palms of our hands are crisscrossed With as many intersections as a leaf.

Tonight is a drunk man, his dirty shirt. There is no couple chatting by the recycling bins, offering to help me unload my plastics. There is not even the black and white cat that balances elegantly on the lip of the dumpster. There is only the smell of sour breath. Sweat on the collar of my shirt. A water bottle rolling under a car. Me in my too-small pajama pants stacking juice jugs on neighbors’ juice jugs. I look to see if there is someone drinking on their balcony. I tell myself I will wave.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar Pale . . . Shalimar The epigraph is from a 12-line poem entitled “Kashmiri Song.” There are allusions to “Kashmiri Song” throughout this poem. The Shalimar Garden, in Lahore, Pakistan, was built by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1619 for his wife Nur Jahan. — Laurence Hope Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell Where . . . spell A direct quotation of line 2 of “Kashmiri Song” tonight? Whom else from rapture’s road will you expel tonight? Those “Fabrics of Cashmere—” “to make Me beautiful—” Fabrics . . . tell The quotations are from Emily Dickinson’s poem that begins, “I am ashamed – I hide – / What right have I – to be a Bride -”. Lines 7-9 of her poem read: “Me to adorn – How – tell –/ Trinket – to make Me beautiful –/ Fabrics of Cashmere –” “Trinket”—to gem—“Me to adorn—How tell”—tonight? Fabrics . . . tell The quotations are from Emily Dickinson’s poem that begins, “I am ashamed – I hide – / What right have I – to be a Bride -”. Lines 7-9 of her poem read: Me to adorn – How – tell – / Trinket – to make Me beautiful – / Fabrics of Cashmere – I beg for haven: Prisons, let open your gates— A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight. God’s vintage loneliness has turned to vinegar— All the archangels—their wings frozen—fell tonight. Lord, cried out the idols,Don’t let us be broken; Only we can convert the infidel tonight.

tonight my sparrows let go the snow into fields of carnations swollen with anger. tonight the three popes proclaim the revolution against teenage television. seals smash their heads bloody their heads on the elevators the paternoster elevators which delays the holding of their conference. tonight my sister the wind's bride gives blood for the cello of the jericho desert which prompts the trombones to hold a protest meeting. tonight I hang your lips like birdseed outside my door and observe through the window their death-struggle with the she vulture. tonight let go the snow

There is a music to this sadness. In a room somewhere two people dance. I do not mean to say desire is everything. A cup half empty is simply half a cup. How many times have we been there and not there? I have seen waitresses slip a night's worth of tips into the jukebox, their eyes saying yes to nothing in particular. Desire is not the point. Tonight your name is a small thing falling through sadness. We wake alone in houses of sticks, of straw, of wind. How long have we stood at the end of the pier watching that water going? In the distance the lights curve along Tampa Bay, a wishbone ready to snap and the night riding on that half promise, a half moon to light the whole damned sky. This is the way things are with us. Sometimes we love almost enough. We say I can do this, I can do more than this

I did not come here to sing a blues. Lately, I open my mouth & out comes marigolds, yellow plums. I came to make the sky a garden. Give me rain or give me honey, dear lord. The sky has given us no water this year. I ride my bike to a boy, when I get there what we make will not be beautiful or love at all, but it will be deserved. I’ve started seeking men to wet the harvest. Come, tonight I declare we must move instead of pray. Tonight, east of here, two boys, one dressed in what could be blood & one dressed in what could be blood before the wound, meet & mean mug & God, tonight, let them dance! Tonight, the bullet does not exist. Tonight, the police have turned to their God for forgiveness. Tonight, we bury nothing, we serve a God with no need for shovels, we serve a God with a bad hip & a brother in prison. Tonight, let every man be his own lord. Let wherever two people stand be a reunion of ancient lights. Let’s waste the moon’s marble glow shouting our names to the stars until we are the stars. O, precious God! O, sweet black town! I am drunk & I thirst. When I get to the boy who lets me practice hunger with him I will not give him the name of your newest ghost I will give him my body & what he does with it is none of my business, but I will say look, I made it a whole day, still, no rain still, I am without exit wound & he will say Tonight, I want to take you how the police do, unarmed & sudden & tonight, when we dream, we dream of dancing in a city slowly becoming ash.