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Into the changes of autumn brush the doe walked, and the hide, head, and ears were the tinsel browns. They made her. I could not see her. She reappeared, stuffed with apples, and I shot her. Into the pines she ran, and I ran after. I might have lost her, seeing no sign of blood or scuffle, but felt myself part of the woods, a woman with a doe’s ears, and heard her dying, counted her last breaths like a song of dying, and found her dying. I shot her again because her lungs rattled like castanets, then poked her with the gun barrel because her eyes were dusty and unreal. I opened her belly and pushed the insides like rotted fruit into a rabbit hole, skinned her, broke her leg joints under my knee, took the meat, smelled the half-digested smell that was herself. Ah, I closed her eyes. I left her refolded in some briars with the last sun on her head like a benediction, head tilted on its axis of neck and barren bone; head bent wordless over a death, though I heard the night wind blowing through her fur, heard riot in the emptied head.

make out with him a bit, this is what my friend would like to do oh these too many dead summers later, and as much as I want to stroll with her into the poet's hazy fancy all I can see is O'Hara's long-gone lips fallen free of the bone, slumbering beneath the grainy soil. I can hear Frank's dry voice combing the air for song, but what I see is his skeleton entombed in dust, wrapped in his dapper suit, his razzle-dazzle sunglasses. She sees him alive, ambling down a sidewalk, all of New York clambering into the sky behind him, cuff links winking, his dear friends waving, calling him by name like they do in the city: 800,000 people and you step outside for a smoke and see someone you know. That's how it is with death. Those you love come at you like lightning, crackle for an instant—so kissable— and then lips and all, they're gone.

There was an ancient well-site beneath the labyrinth I did not reach, the part underground, labeled (what else?) The Crypt. But labels always hide something about what they seem to define. They set the thing apart without disclosing why. Alive costs a pretty penny to see The Crypt now.

To lie back under the tallest oldest trees. How far the stems rise, rise before ribs of shelter open! To live in the mercy of God. The complete sentence too adequate, has no give. Awe, not comfort. Stone, elbows of stony wood beneath lenient moss bed. And awe suddenly passing beyond itself. Becomes a form of comfort. Becomes the steady air you glide on, arms stretched like the wings of flying foxes. To hear the multiple silence of trees, the rainy forest depths of their listening. To float, upheld, as salt water would hold you, once you dared. . To live in the mercy of God. To feel vibrate the enraptured waterfall flinging itself unabating down and down to clenched fists of rock. Swiftness of plunge, hour after year after century, O or Ah uninterrupted, voice many-stranded. To breathe spray. The smoke of it. Arcs of steelwhite foam, glissades of fugitive jade barely perceptible. Such passion— rage or joy? Thus, not mild, not temperate, God’s love for the world. Vast flood of mercy flung on resistance.

Now is the time for mirth, Nor cheek or tongue be dumb; For with the flow'ry earth The golden pomp is come. The golden pomp is come; For now each tree does wear, Made of her pap and gum, Rich beads of amber here. Now reigns the rose, and now Th' Arabian dew besmears My uncontrolled brow And my retorted hairs. Homer, this health to thee, In sack of such a kind That it would make thee see Though thou wert ne'er so blind. Next, Virgil I'll call forth To pledge this second health In wine, whose each cup's worth An Indian commonwealth. A goblet next I'll drink To Ovid, and suppose, Made he the pledge, he'd think The world had all one nose. Then this immensive cup Of aromatic wine, Catullus, I quaff up To that terse muse of thine. Wild I am now with heat; O Bacchus! cool thy rays! Or frantic, I shall eat Thy thyrse, and bite the bays. Round, round the roof does run; And being ravish'd thus, Come, I will drink a tun To my Propertius. Now, to Tibullus, next, This flood I drink to thee; But stay, I see a text That this presents to me. Behold, Tibullus lies Here burnt, whose small return Of ashes scarce suffice To fill a little urn. Trust to good verses then; They only will aspire, When pyramids, as men, Are lost i' th' funeral fire. And when all bodies meet, In Lethe to be drown'd, Then only numbers sweet With endless life are crown'd.

1 Take your boulevards, your Locust Street, Your Chestnut, Pine, your Olive, Take your Forest Park and Shaw’s Garden, Your avenues that lead past street-corner violence, Past your West End, past your Limit, To shabby suburban crime, Vandalism in the parking-lot, Abductions from the shopping mall— Like making the same mistake over and over On the piano or typewriter keys, Always hitting the wrong note— How “very alive, very American” They are, how chockful of metaphysics, Hellbent to obliterate the wilderness. 2 Learn to live with sycamores, Their sad, peeling trunks, scabbed all over With shabby patches, their enormous leaves In dingy shades of ochre and dun Rattling like castanets, their roots Thick as a man’s leg, crawling Like enormous worms out of the broken pavements, Continually thrusting themselves up From pools of shade they make, Sculpturing the street With dappled dark and light As glaucoma, a disease of the eye, Makes the world more beautiful With its mysterious rainbows. 3 Already in Iowa the monarchs are emerging, Signaling with their tawny wings; In regalia of burnt orange and umber The spangled imperial procession Meanders along the democratic roadsides, Across straight state lines, Over rivers and artificial lakes And the loneliness of middle America On the way to Mexico. The tiny wind of their passing Is not even recorded As a disturbance in the atmosphere. 4 Driving back into the American past, Homesick for forests, flowers without names, vast savannahs, Lowlands or mountains teeming with game, Bluffs crowned with cottonwoods, mudbanks Where crocodiles might sun themselves; Finding instead the remains of strange picnics, Replications of old selves, a cacophony of changes Like a room crowded with chairs In which no one can sit, as if history were furniture Grown splintered and shabby; Studying a picturesque rustic architecture To master its splendid abstractions, Shady verandas and porches, Or the republican simplicity of a cow.

It was necessary to move, and at this exit the beggar, cross-legged at the fork of the tunnel, calls out Love! A welcome, of sorts. The night light fucks the suburb into nightmare familiarity — not like a shrammed nerd touting guided walks and histories that contract imagination for demolition work, levelling today's housing, restoring common greens, lingering at sites orphaned of their fever hospitals — by no means that hyperliterate, poor entrepreneur — It is the view, the barbed wire roaring into view round and round the playground walltop. It is the warehouse, warehouse windows blank of occupation. It is lives, lives supplied in great number, fulfilment of numbers. It is the sense of something shared — the tailor scissors razoring open fishmouth stitches, the sewn-up pocket of the new suit, and finding something — But it is new, all new, even the gangs who graffiti chimneys scrubbed and lovely, deleted like the railways delete repeatedly the head, the occasionally payrolled head, the feet of the quartered commuters, of the vertebral week.

With razorblade eyes                       The Filipina is most sincere With too much water And will make a very good wife. With animal teeth                            The Filipina is a loyal partner, We sometimes kill Deserving of all your love. With splintered hands                    The Filipina is the total package, With too much life Much more than meets the eye. With ribcage unlocked                   The Filipina is not for you, We wither your roots If  you cannot handle her claws.

They call it sacrifice—            imagine me a tiny poppy on a field of green felt—brief blip of color, limitless expanse. I’ve never felt foreign, or like a lash in his eye. If it’s not love, it’s very like. Most days it feels the same— exacting—he tweezes the stray thoughts from my speech, cleans up my heart with a tortoiseshell comb. Every lady should have such a man, edging her lawn with a sharp rotary blade. Year by year—let’s call it always— editor and editrix. Engaged against a flurry of typos, showered in revisionist white out. I erase his crow’s feet, buff away his frown. My head—he yawns it open, scoops out dark foam, yesses I’ve regretted, the tiny poppy everyone sees flapping to pieces— And so, we are growing taller, sweeter, ratified in the glow of the big correction.

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee (Dear) so much, Lov’d I not Honour more.