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They were the local Ohio palm, tropic in the heat of trains. They could grow in anything—pitch, whole grain, cinders, ash and rust, the dirt dumped back of the foundry, what the men wore home. Little willows, they were made to be brushed back by the traffic of boxcars the way wind will dust the shade of the small part of a river.—They'd go from almost green to almost gray with each long passing, each leaf, each branch a stain on the winded air. They were too thin for rain—nothing could touch them. So we'd start with pocketknives, cutting and whittling them down, from willow, palm, or any other name. They were what they looked like. Horsewhip, whipweed. They could lay on a fine welt if you wanted. And on a hot, dry day, July, they could all but burn. At a certain age you try to pull all kinds of things out of the ground, out of the loose gravel thrown by trains. Or break off what you can and cut it clean.

It is not the chambers of the heart that hold him captive, but the hallways of the mind. Why his image burning green and blue persists —the face, the eyes questioning, the shape of his head—is beyond anything I can understand.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

—and he cried with a loud voice: Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees— (R evelation ) They are cutting down the great plane-trees at the end of the gardens. For days there has been the grate of the saw, the swish of the branches as they fall, The crash of the trunks, the rustle of trodden leaves, With the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas,’ the loud common talk, the loud common laughs of the men, above it all. I remember one evening of a long past Spring Turning in at a gate, getting out of a cart, and finding a large dead rat in the mud of the drive. I remember thinking: alive or dead, a rat was a god-forsaken thing, But at least, in May, that even a rat should be alive. The week’s work here is as good as done. There is just one bough On the roped bole, in the fine grey rain, Green and high And lonely against the sky. (Down now!—) And but for that, If an old dead rat Did once, for a moment, unmake the Spring, I might never have thought of him again. It is not for a moment the Spring is unmade to-day; These were great trees, it was in them from root to stem: When the men with the ‘Whoops’ and the ‘Whoas’ have carted the whole of the whispering loveliness away Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them. It is going now, and my heart has been struck with the hearts of the planes; Half my life it has beat with these, in the sun, in the rains, In the March wind, the May breeze, In the great gales that came over to them across the roofs from the great seas. There was only a quiet rain when they were dying; They must have heard the sparrows flying, And the small creeping creatures in the earth where they were lying— But I, all day, I heard an angel crying: ‘Hurt not the trees.’

In the fog which surrounds the trees, the leaves are stripped—leaves defaced already by slow oxidation, deadened by the sap's out-seeping for flowers' and fruits' gain, since the harsh heats of August made of them a less. In the bark, vertical furrows crease and slit where dampness drains to the earth's base, indifferent to the living citizens of the trunk. Flowers scattered, fruit conferred. Since youth, this relinquishing of breathing attributes and body parts has become for the trees a standard practice.

My neighbor is velvety and kicks serious game. So sweet garlic refuses to hang tight in his mouth. He pulls women to his wide chest each time as if he's won the Lotto. He rocks them gently and gentler. My neighbor is a master spooner. He knows not of desire, but only the rules of engagement. He says,I miss having Skype on all night so I can listen to your breathing. He floats in his museum, of gams, drifting from frame to frame.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations It is old school custom It is old school custom Regarding the title, “trenta-sei” is Italian for the number “thirty-six.” Ciardi uses the number in the title to give name to a new poetic form for a 36 line poem he himself created. In a letter to Vince Clemente, Ciardi defines the poetic form when discussing an earlier poem titled “A Trente-sei for the Boat People”: “A trente-sei is six six-line stanzas, the second of which begins with the second line of stanza one, the third with the third line, the fourth with the fourth line, etc. Them Eyetralian troubadors forgot to invent it, but I did it because it is a natural form and because it just came out that way. I may even try it again.” to pretend to be sad when we think about the early death of Keats the early death of Keats English Poet John Keats died in 1821, from tuberculosis, at the age of 25. . The species-truth of the matter is we are glad. Psilanthropic Psilanthropic A word Ciardi makes up here, meaning something like ‘merely human,’ taken from the Greek psilos(mere) and anthropos(man)” among exegetes exegetes People who interpret scripture; skilled interpreters , I am so moved that when the plate the plate The collection plate in which church goers may drop a monetary offering for the church and pass along to others comes by I almost think to pay the God—but why? When we think about the early death of Keats we are glad to be spared the bother of dying ourselves. His poems are a candy store of bitter-sweets His poems are a candy store of bitter-sweets Echoes John Keats’ sonnet “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again”: “once more humbly assay / The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit” (lines 7-8) . We munch whole flights of angels whole flights of angels An echo of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Following Hamlet’s death, Horatio says, “Now cracks a noble heart.—Good-night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” (Act 5, Scene 2, lines 359-360) from his shelves drooling a sticky glut glut An excessive, abundant supply; a surplus , almost enough to sicken us. But what delicious stuff! The species-truth of the matter is we are glad to have a death to munch on. Truth to tell, we are also glad to pretend it makes us sad. When it comes to dying, Keats did it so well we thrill to the performance. Safely here, this side of the fallen curtain, we stand and cheer. Psilanthropic among exegetes, as once in a miles-high turret turret A castle tower spitting flame, I watched boys flower through orange winding sheets and shammed shammed Faked, pretended a mourning because it put a name to a death I might have taken—which in a way made me immortal for another day— I was so moved that when the plate came by I had my dollar in hand to give to death but changed to a penny—enough for the old guy a penny—enough for the old guy A Greek mythological reference to the fee for the boatman Charon, ferryman of Hades, to transport the dead to the underworld was two pennies, one for each eye. The line also echoes T.S. Eliot’s epigraph to “The Hollow Men”: “A penny for the Old Guy” (1925). , and almost enough saved to sweeten my breath with a toast I will pledge to the Ape of the Divine Ape of the Divine Possible reference to Hanuman, a Hindu monkey deity. The god of death, Rama, protected him and prevented him from the experience of death. in thanks for every death that spares me mine. I almost thought of paying the God—but why? Had the boy lived, he might have grown as dull as Tennyson Tennyson The English poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) . Far better, I say, to die and leave us a formed feeling. O beautiful, pale, dying poet, fading as soft as rhyme, the saddest music keeps the sweetest time the saddest music keeps the sweetest time Echoes Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “To a Skylark”: “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought” (line 90) .

feygele is yiddish for the way i walk into a room. feygele, the anglicized spelling of angel fallen into the dark earthen pits of fashion. feygele from the german vögelein meaning “little bird.” little bird, where do you flame from? where do you bird from little german flame? little singlet split for entry. little finger slipped into the mouth staring hard across the bare wet bar. little bear in his arrogant leather harness, his broad american faith. carry me with you across the fleshless threshold how an old woman carries her language across an ocean so vast, so many fathoms deep one might imagine all life springing from the wet slit of its shoreline. sure i’ve memorized every word for faggot & nearly all their origins are plural & bound together with twine. little string corset wrapped around my brothers’ thighs. little horses wild at the bit to be ridden. little films where the animals are let out but only at night. sure i’ve eaten directly from the hand of a man who taught me the simplest words, gestures of thirst & begging. sure i was hatched into a world that expected me to fly straight into power- lines. but see how hideous hearse-shined my feathers, see my wings spread like a dead book of legs, see my brutal beak a seed-thief in the club light. my first name was flame & i drew moths & mouths alike. feygele as in son of the first preacher with gills. as in the flood that began & refused to quench. as in when i was a child i killed a bird, sparrow i think, with my bare hands so it wouldn’t go on suffering — it was sick. give me your hands, hold my skull between them how you’d hold a bag writhing with birds, a pillowcase thick with lights, two grown boys in gowns howling, a cold mud village consumed by flames, a cage door opening, a blade, a blade, ablaze.

These be Three silent things: The falling snow. . the hour Before the dawn. . the mouth of one Just dead.

Three sang of love together: one with lips Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow, Flushed to the yellow hair and finger tips; And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show; And one was blue with famine after love, Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low The burden of what those were singing of. One shamed herself in love; one temperately Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife; One famished died for love. Thus two of three Took death for love and won him after strife; One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee: All on the threshold, yet all short of life.