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The girl from the satellite town holds berries in the fast stream supermarket queue. She carries her longing like a stream of song, her melody a body over the boundary of what is solid and what flows. The guys in the depression- hit town are tripping in the fruit aisle. Falling for her berry lightness they slip out from their outlines. One guy says she takes the form of a dream, or the dream of a form. On the page of the regional night berries pulse like the notes of a song in the stream. The girl who sheds the skin of her longing escapes into more longing. In a dream on the margins of town one of the guys hears a girl sing, her voice like strings, a basket of ripe berries floating into the night on a stream. The girl, the guy, in derelict bedrooms hear lucent songs undressing, streaming from their outlines through the boundaries of town wrapping around them the scent of fresh berries. And I was the guy and the girl was within the page of the town ever, over, after, never, the song long, long, long, long. The stream is slipped as the ground you stand on. Build houses out of song. The berries are undressing. The stream is long, gone, long. The girl dreams a form of dream, or forms a dream of form: the boundaries of song in the night undressed as a stream in the morning.

'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due; It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true Thy comic muse, from the exalted line Touch'd by thy Alchemist , doth since decline From that her zenith, and foretells a red And blushing evening, when she goes to bed; Yet such as shall outshine the glimmering light With which all stars shall gild the following night. Nor think it much, since all thy eaglets may Endure the sunny trial, if we say This hath the stronger wing, or that doth shine Trick'd up in fairer plumes, since all are thine. Who hath his flock of cackling geese compar'd With thy tun'd choir of swans? or else who dar'd To call thy births deform'd? But if thou bind By city-custom, or by gavelkind, In equal shares thy love on all thy race, We may distinguish of their sex, and place; Though one hand form them, and though one brain strike Souls into all, they are not all alike. Why should the follies then of this dull age Draw from thy pen such an immodest rage As seems to blast thy else-immortal bays, When thine own tongue proclaims thy itch of praise? Such thirst will argue drouth. No, let be hurl'd Upon thy works by the detracting world What malice can suggest; let the rout say, The running sands, that, ere thou make a play, Count the slow minutes, might a Goodwin frame To swallow, when th' hast done, thy shipwreck'd name; Let them the dear expense of oil upbraid, Suck'd by thy watchful lamp, that hath betray'd To theft the blood of martyr'd authors, spilt Into thy ink, whilst thou growest pale with guilt. Repine not at the taper's thrifty waste, That sleeks thy terser poems; nor is haste Praise, but excuse; and if thou overcome A knotty writer, bring the booty home; Nor think it theft if the rich spoils so torn From conquer'd authors be as trophies worn. Let others glut on the extorted praise Of vulgar breath, trust thou to after-days; Thy labour'd works shall live when time devours Th' abortive offspring of their hasty hours. Thou are not of their rank, the quarrel lies Within thine own verge; then let this suffice, The wiser world doth greater thee confess Than all men else, than thyself only less.

Plant twelve date palms in a ring around the tarmac. Make them tall, slight towers, leaning into the wind as princes do. Fear that the sweetness of dates will churn your stomach. Plant them anyways. Plant the pudge of his fuzzless face in the arrested time of a school portrait. Plant his exotic name—found in a book that spelled dreams of eminence and hope for an uncertain coupling—in your ear. Know that whether it leaches into the soil or not, this ground was watered with his blood. This tarmac turned a rioting red. Strike that. There was a screech of brakes, and sirens howling like a cliché, then a volley of pops that might have been a game if only what came next was not such utter silence. The tarmac was red. There was no riot. Build a circle of palms and something to keep them safe. Build a greenhouse around the twelve palms. Yes, a green house. This land is not our land. Dig up the tarmac, the dark heavy loam of this side of town. Be sure to wear gloves as you dig through the brownfield’s mystification. Once the Cuyahoga River was a wall of fire. God knows how rain melts metal. Dig into that earth and build a foundation. Quarry it. Let the little boys and little girls of Shaker Heights and Orange bring a Game Boy or cellphone, or other toy made our of coltan that, chances are, a little boy or little girl dug up by hand in the DRC. Let the children lay their shiny toys in the foundation. Seal up ground with molten lead. Die-cast its melted weight. Yes, make a typecaster’s mold, and leave it a dull grey, like flint. Stamp out a broadside, only set it in the foundation’s floor. Let us read the letter that says this officer was unfit. Let us go over it step by step, every time we walk toward the green house of imaging what this boy’s boyhood should have been, the fulfilling of his name, his promise. Plant an oasis here. How is not my problem. * Let someone who remember how cook de rice. Let she cook de rice with palm oil ’til is yellow an sticky. Of course dem have palm oil in Cleveland. Dis no Third World we livin in. Let she cook she rice an peas. Let she say how she know to do it from a film she seen. In de film, dem people from de sea island gone to Sierra Leone and dema find dey people, dey people dat sing de same song with de same words. Come to find out dem words is not jes playplay words, dem words for weeping. So dema sit down together, an weep together, dey South Carolina an Sierra Leone family. Dey weep over de war, an de water, an de fresh and de forgotten, an dey cook dat rice ’til is yellow and sticky. Dey nyam it with dey hand, outta banana leaf and de old, old man, him say, you never forget the language you cry in. Let all dem little girls from Shaker Heights skip the gymnastics meet. Let dem come and eat rice and eat rice ’til they don’t want to eat rice no more an let dem still have rice to eat. Let them lose their innocence. Let horizons settle low. Let dates and raisin and apples and nuts seem a strange mockery of the new, the sweet, the hoped for. Let us share the matter. Let us sit here under these date palms, and haggle over whose fault it is. Let the rage that says tear this shit down tear this shit down. Let us start with the glass walls of the greenhouse, as a demonstration. Let the rage that says I cannot speak not speak. Let it suck speech into its terrible maw and leave us shuddering in silence. Let the rage that says, black lives matter matter. Let that other rage that says all lives matter be torn down. Let the matter with how we don’t all matter in the same way churn up a monumental penitence. Let the date palm offer us shade. Let us ask why we are still here. Let us lower eyes as we face his mother, his father, his sister.

Inside, inside the return, inside, the hero diminishes. Over her vessel they place a veil, and when it is lifted the name of the vessel has been lost. Consider the darkness of the water which has no scent and neither can it swallow. Yet the ship’s bow extends over the proscenium like a horse at a fence and the orchestra stands and files out. On the long walk home, I long to see your face.

It takes more than a wish to catch a fish you take the hook you add the bait you concentrate and then you wait you wait     you wait but not a bite the fish don’t have an appetite so tell them what good bait you’ve got and how your bait can hit the spot this works a whole lot better than a wish if you really want to catch a fish

Would that you were alive today, Catullus! Truth ’tis, there is a filthy skunk amongst us, A rank musk-idiot, the filthiest skunk, Of no least sorry use on earth, but only Fit in fancy to justify the outlay Of your most horrible vocabulary. My Muse, all innocent as Eve in Eden, Would yet wear any skins of old pollution Rather than celebrate the name detested. Ev’n now might he rejoice at our attention, Guess'd he this little ode were aiming at him. O! were you but alive again, Catullus! For see, not one among the bards of our time With their flimsy tackle was out to strike him; Not those two pretty Laureates of England, Not Alfred Tennyson nor Alfred Austin.

to come away with Hesiod and leave the rock as though to rocks the tree to trees and dwell on other things imagine the injunction to leave the mint to its own devices among the dust & stones in the shadow of rocks or tree-roots hard as rocks imagine poems left to their own devices as poets gorge on air & airy thoughts & figures – the thought sobers me to the bone of a sobriety earned at the expense of the airiness Hesiod was commissioned to name but who wouldnt seize a staff of bay or ash or gum and trade common or garden cough for lungsfull of song taking the world in one’s stride careering towards heaven?

To converse with the greats by trying their blindfolds on; to correspond with books by rewriting them; to edit holy edicts, and at the midnight hour to talk with the clock by tapping a wall in the solitary confinement of the universe.

to crave what the light does crave to shelter, to flee to gain desire of every splayed leaf to calm cattle, to heat the mare to coax dead flies back from slumber to turn the gaze of each opened bud to ripe the fruit to rot the fruit and drive down under the earth to lord gentle dust to lend a glancing grace to llamas to gather dampness from fields and divide birds and divide the ewes from slaughter and raise the corn and bend the wheat and drive tractors to ruin burnish the fox, brother the hawk shed the snake, bloom the weed and drive all wind diurnal to blanch the fire and clot the cloud to husk, to harvest, sheave and chaff to choose the bird and voice the bird to sing us, veery, into darkness

Child, with many a childish wile, Timid look, and blushing smile, Downy wings to steal thy way, Gilded bow, and quiver gay, Who in thy simple mien would trace The tyrant of the human race? Who is he whose flinty heart Hath not felt the flying dart? Who is he that from the wound Hath not pain and pleasure found? Who is he that hath not shed Curse and blessing on thy head?