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Come we to the summer, to the summer we will come, For the woods are full of bluebells and the hedges full of bloom, And the crow is on the oak a-building of her nest, And love is burning diamonds in my true lover's breast; She sits beneath the whitethorn a-plaiting of her hair, And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair; I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest, And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast. The clock-a-clay is creeping on the open bloom of May, The merry bee is trampling the pinky threads all day, And the chaffinch it is brooding on its grey mossy nest In the whitethorn bush where I will lean upon my lover's breast; I'll lean upon her breast and I'll whisper in her ear That I cannot get a wink o'sleep for thinking of my dear; I hunger at my meat and I daily fade away Like the hedge rose that is broken in the heat of the day.

When clouds turn heavy, rich and mottled as an oyster bed, when the temperature drops so fast that fog conjures itself inside the cars, as if the parking lots were filled with row upon row of lovers, when my umbrella veils my face and threatens to reverse itself at every gust of wind, and rain lashes my legs and the hem of my skirt, but I am walking to meet a man who’ll buy me coffee and kiss my fingers— what can be more beautiful, then, than these boys sprinting through the storm, laughing, shouldering the rain aside, running to their dorms, perhaps to class, carrying, like torches, their useless shoes?

Welcome, rain or tempest From yon airy powers, We have languished for them Many sultry hours, And earth is sick and wan, and pines with all her flowers. What have they been doing In the burning June? Riding with the genii? Visiting the moon? Or sleeping on the ice amid an arctic noon? Bring they with them jewels From the sunset lands? What are these they scatter With such lavish hands? There are no brighter gems in Raolconda’s sands. Pattering on the gravel, Dropping from the eaves, Glancing in the grass, and Tinkling on the leaves, They flash the liquid pearls as flung from fairy sieves. Meanwhile, unreluctant, Earth like Danae lies; Listen! is it fancy That beneath us sighs, As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies? Jove, it is, descendeth In those crystal rills; And this world-wide tremor Is a pulse that thrills To a god’s life infused through veins of velvet hills. Wait, thou jealous sunshine, Break not on their bliss; Earth will blush in roses Many a day for this, And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss.

I saw an eagle sweep to the sky— The Godlike! – seeking his place on high, With a strong, and wild, and rapid wing— A dark, and yet a dazzling thing; And his arching neck, his bristling crest, And the dark plumes quivering upon his breast; And his eye, bent up to each beam of light, Like a bright sword flash’d with a sword in fight. I saw him rise o’er the forest trees; I saw his pinion ride the breeze; Beyond the clouds I watched him tower On his path of pride – his flight of power. I watched him wheeling, stern and lone, Where the keenest ray of the sun was thrown; Soaring, circling – bathed in light: Such was that desert eagle’s flight. Suddenly, then, to my straining eye, I saw the strong wing slack on high; Falling, falling to earth once more; The dark breast covered with foam and gore; The dark eyes’ glory dim with pain; Sick to death with a sun-struck brain! Reeling down from that height divine, Eagle of heaven! such fall was thine! Even so we see the sons of light, Up to the day-beam steer their flight; And the wing of genius cleaves the sky, As the clouds rush on when the winds are high: Then comes the hour of sudden dread— Then is the blasting sunlight shed; And the gifted fall in their agony, Sund-struck eagle! to die like thee!

for donald justice Beyond the strings of water clinging to the windowpane, there were no cranes, just rain, a sky blurred by wet glass, a pond corrugated by raindrops, and, inside, the smell of naphthalene bars, a Victrola with a broken arm, a spotty daguerreotype, a dusty crinoline— O mildewed, seersucker suits draped over vacant chairs.

I was sitting in Old Town Square with tourists and birds and I was reading Foucault, how “he who is subjected to a field of visibility ... becomes the principle of his own subjection” and all around me the beautiful Czechoslovakian boys moved through the first day of spring like perennially visible inmates in the opening credits of a prison porno. The sun reflected off the glass and my table was an inscrutable tower of light from which I peered, invisibly, at the swan-graceful boys who seemed to skirr across the stones, traveling, it seemed, to something vaguely ridiculous and charmingly anachronistic: cuff link shopping, or brunch with the duchess. The coffee had made me jittery and I was beginning to sweat from both sun and desire. I considered moving to the outer edge of the circled tables, so the boys could see me as I could see them, but then the 600-year-old orloj sounded the hour and the twelve apostles and skeletal death spun around and I was afraid to leave my tower. I didn’t want to be visible in the way those small dancing figures were visible and as much as I wanted a handsome companion, I feared my foot getting caught in a sewer grate or my spoon falling from my saucer and clattering on the pavement, startling the birds into a ruckus. An errant ball of sweat fell from my chin and onto the page. I looked down to where it had landed on the word “reciprocal” which made me think how looking is always reducible to twos — two eyes, two parties, two possible outcomes, and how those who watch from the panopticon’s black pupil may, in any case, not even exist.

If sunlight fell like snowflakes, gleaming yellow and so bright, we could build a sunman, we could have a sunball fight, we could watch the sunflakes drifting in the sky. We could go sleighing in the middle of July through sundrifts and sunbanks, we could ride a sunmobile, and we could touch sunflakes— I wonder how they'd feel.

Come To Sunny Prestatyn Laughed the girl on the poster, Kneeling up on the sand In tautened white satin. Behind her, a hunk of coast, a Hotel with palms Seemed to expand from her thighs and Spread breast-lifting arms. She was slapped up one day in March. A couple of weeks, and her face Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed; Huge tits and a fissured crotch Were scored well in, and the space Between her legs held scrawls That set her fairly astride A tuberous cock and balls Autographed Titch Thomas, while Someone had used a knife Or something to stab right through The moustached lips of her smile. She was too good for this life. Very soon, a great transverse tear Left only a hand and some blue. Now Fight Cancer is there.

Occasionally he wakes, finds the cool cube of his room delirious with colors: blaring daffodils and rigid roses, petals a soft, translucent red like the inside of an eyelid. By the window, a clock's expressionless face near glossy skins of magazines, a telephone the color of frozen milk or silence, the color of old. He is melting, his bones grown paper-light, they travel over the bed's pale hills, the woman who's come to wash him. The ceiling is a landscape bleeding white as he floats through the muted winter sky, a boundless symbol of nothing. The woman draws the blind.

The sky hangs up its starry pictures: a swan, a crab, a horse. And even though you’re three hundred miles away, I know you see them, too. Right now, my side of the bed is empty, a clear blue lake of flannel. The distance yawns and stretches. It’s hard to remember we swim in an ocean of great love, so easy to fall into bickering like little birds at the feeder fighting over proso and millet, unaware of how large the bag of grain is, a river of golden seeds, that the harvest was plentiful, the corn is in the barn, and whenever we’re hungry, a dipperful of just what we need will be spilled . . .