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(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.) Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell. Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall. Both arms have mutinied against me,—brutes. My fingers fidget like ten idle brats. I tried to peg out soldierly,—no use! One dies of war like any old disease. This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes. I have my medals?—Discs to make eyes close. My glorious ribbons?—Ripped from my own back In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.) A short life and a merry one, my buck! We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old,— Yet now ... I'd willingly be puffy, bald, And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting, Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting. Well, that's what I learnt,—that, and making money. Your fifty years ahead seem none too many? Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year To help myself to nothing more than air! One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long? Spring wind would work its own way to my lung, And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots. My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts! When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that. Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought How well I might have swept his floors for ever. I'd ask no night off when the bustle's over, Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust, Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn, Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan? I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town, Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load? O Life, Life, let me breathe,—a dug-out rat! Not worse than ours the lives rats lead— Nosing along at night down some safe rut, They find a shell-proof home before they rot. Dead men may envy living mites in cheese, Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys, And subdivide, and never come to death. Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth. “I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone,” Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned: The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now. “Pushing up daisies,” is their creed, you know. To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap, For all the usefulness there is in soap. D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup? Some day, no doubt, if ... Friend, be very sure I shall be better off with plants that share More peaceably the meadow and the shower. Soft rains will touch me,— as they could touch once, And nothing but the sun shall make me ware. Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear; Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince. Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest. Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds, But here the thing's best left at home with friends. My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest, To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds. Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned To do without what blood remained these wounds.

THE DEEP EVENING-COLORED ROSE of the sea is closing. Sweet crude oil, orange as rust, finds an open pathway into the marsh. And what you thought would be your home, lush with grasses, is no home, drives you out into the gray-glazed gates of sleep. Blood flowers where we don’t see it. And every chance event is a high note racing from stars in sea-depths of brightness, and every shock we feel we feel only with the slack ropes of our arms. Someone wants to hide the body of oil and cannot. Someone wants to hide their hands from shame. Shark, dolphin, manatee, fish, each slick skin an undreamt tine threading its red flute-dusk through fumes. Sound of the flood-dark pulse. Then the second when the water makes no sound. THE OLD VANDALS WERE FLOODS AND BOATS eroding the banks. The islands that once dotted the bays have sunk, disappearing into silverish grit, thinned into algae and filament now being made quiet by plumes. Despite ourselves we are made quiet. The death of the sea a thing we must lower ourselves into to imagine. I will stay with you here inside the sheen of orange that quickly kills, not like the saltwater slowly starving the freshwater- marshes and grasses that knit this green-wet world together. The two breathless gannets found covered in oil are not unlike you, at the mercy of a mercy that moves in plumes, that insists certain fates remain invisible. What existed before the oil arrived was delicate and mired, a broom of moonlight swept through half-choked waves. I trust you if you wish for what it, too, might have been. LEADING INTO THE BAY are soft green expanses of grasses, saltwater channels, slicks not glimpsed here before. The birds bathe where they can, in half-damp shadows that make possible the next free climb into air. There is nothing beyond our means to feel it— oil pushing up to the surface where the surface-dwellers die, turtles pulling in from the Gulf for nesting. If I close my eyes I can hear the faint blue traces of blood over-gathered by oil and the sound of ice near the seafloor. There will be a time when nothing living moves, a degradation of stillness beyond any liquid scar. Still, the solutions of despair are weak if you believe you can touch an undersea reef, the belly of a small wounded whale. You have the power to feel it. The breath of the animal moving like trust into your arms. BEFORE THE HOUR WHEN THE COAST slid into ocean we thought we saw a patch of sun greening in waves. The slip of a fish. There was a need so deep in our bodies we could not even weep. We called for an end and that end did not come. Power after power, our machine tools and cutting tools did nothing to hold back the brown clouds rippling in chaotic columns toward the light. And what the skies mean, passing over beds of tarred seaweed, feels unutterable, like the darkness around a candle. Where had we hoped to live? You came into the month with dreams. You walked on those beaches even though you knew they were sick. The bird that sought the reeds to die in, the fish gill-soaked with oils— you gathered them into yourself as if you alone could bring back their flickering. And overhead the novae exploded toward you along tracks of gas and dust, and the fields of ocean rose into you, and the crabs broke from their cancer fossils in masses of tiny flowers and you felt inside you the islands re-arise, flushed from the thickening imbalance of the earth. (Is there some refuge beyond ourselves that is vast enough? The sea is without grief. As are the days.)

The terrible sons of the mighty race Shout in thunder the Lord is King, The angels whose figure the lightnings trace Flame to the world that the Lord was King, And seraphs whose stature is one with Space, Proclaim that the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. The rushing and undulant sons of fire Fiercely cry that the Lord is King, The rustling legions with harp and lyre Sweetly tell that the Lord was King, And numberless creatures in ceaseless choir Chant that the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. The bards who remember the songs of yore Sing aloud that the Lord is King, The sages enshrouded in mystic lore Find and proclaim that the Lord was King, And rulers of spans of the heavenly floor Cry that the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. The heirs of the Torah, Thy rich bequest, Chant in joy that the Lord is King, The lordly warriors with crown and crest Crown Thee, declaring the Lord was King, And angels in fiery garments drest Repeat that the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. Mellifluous orators trained of tongue Preach and teach that the Lord is King, The shimmering cherubim, radiant, young, Trumpet exultant the Lord was King, And seraphim circling have ever sung The song that the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. Thy people in passionate worship cry One to another the Lord is King. In awe of the marvels beneath the sky Each explains that the Lord was King. One sound from Thy pastures ascends on high: The chant that the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. Assemblies of holiness consecrate Thee with the cry that the Lord is King, Innumerous myriads iterate Only this—that the Lord was King, And flame-flashing angels enthroned in state Echo the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever. The universe throbs with Thy pauseless praise, Chorus eternal, the Lord is King. Thy glory is cried from the dawn of days, Worshippers calling the Lord was King. And ever the Saints who shall witness Thy ways Shall cry that the Lord shall be King for ever. The Lord is King, the Lord was King, the Lord shall be King for ever and ever.

They thought the trouble was over, they thought they had talked it all out, it was a mistake, she’d said, this infatuation for someone else which had turned suddenly too serious, she could see that now. But they thought there was nothing left of it, their nerves had been rubbed so raw through bouts of anger, shame, even love, so many words had come and gone between them that they couldn’t easily remember what they’d said, what they’d imagined. But it didn’t matter now, they thought they had gotten over something difficult, something which had felt immovable, the long unbearable ache which had become too much a habit, and they were celebrating in their way, having dinner at a new expensive place where they had no history of being together, where they expected nothing. They were sipping wine, a deep rich red, the waiter was hovering over them like a generous uncle and they were selecting everything he had suggested— how good to be in his hands for awhile! Soon it was happening, the old ardor was coming back, they were beginning to flirt with one another, the way she said baby, the way his shoulder was brushing hers, the way they were allowing themselves to think for the first time in a long time of the good sex they might later have, the after-talk which would be easy and low. And maybe he hadn’t meant what he was about to say, maybe when she remarked how she loved the leek soup it was the wine in him, his jauntiness, that made him ask what else she loved, jokingly at first, whether she loved the stuffed mushrooms on his plate, the braised beef, or maybe she loved what others were having, this one in the dark suit, or that one with the coyly unbuttoned collar, or maybe she loved the whole damn menu in fact, he couldn’t help himself, the words came pouring forth, spilling all over the table. And it was not until late at night when she’d finally gone to her room and closed herself off from him in sleep that he stopped talking and remembered only half of what he’d said because he’d said too much, created too much damage, crossed some boundary he had avoided most of his life. Maybe it was desert, maybe tundra, or the white insinuating madness of the polar ice cap, but wherever he was was strange and dangerous, and somehow dazzling for all that, and only in the morning would he know for better or worse in which direction each of them would be walking it, though never had he felt, as he had tonight, so permissive with himself, so luxuriously tactless, having said again and again the words he thought he could never bear to use, so suddenly commonplace, so readily available to him now.

A terror is more certain than all the rare desirable popular songs I know, than even now when all of my myths have become . . . , & walk around in black shiny galoshes & carry dirty laundry to & fro, & read great books & don’t know criminals intimately, & publish fat books of the month & have wifeys that are lousy in bed & never realize how bad my writing is because i am poor & symbolize myself. A certain desirable is more terror to me than all that’s rare. How come they don’t give an academic award to all the movie stars that die? they’re still acting, ain’t they? even if they are dead, it should not be held against them, after all they still have the public on their side, how would you like to be a dead movie star & have people sit- ting on your grave? A rare me is more certain than desirable, that’s all the terror, there are too many basketball players in this world & too much progress in the burial industry, lets have old fashioned funerals & stand around & forgive & borrow wet handkerchiefs, & sneak out for drinks & help load the guy into the wagon, & feel sad & make a date with the widow & believe we don’t see all of the people sink- ing into the subways going to basketball games & designing baby sitters at Madison Square Garden. A certain me is desirable, what is so rare as air in a Poem, why can’t i write a foreign movie like all the other boys my age, I confess to all the crimes committed during the month of April, but not to save my own neck, which is adjustable, & telescopes into any size noose, I’m doing it to save Gertrude Stein’s reputation, who is secretly flying model airplanes for the underground railroad stern gang of oz, & is the favorite in all the bouts . . . not officially opened yet Holland tunnel is the one who writes untrue phone numbers. A desirable poem is more rare than rare, & terror is certain, who wants to be a poet & work a twenty four hour shift, they never ask you first, who wants to listen to the radiator play string quartets all night. I want to be allowed not to be, suppose a man wants to swing on the kiddie swings, should people be allowed to stab him with queer looks & drag him off to bed & its no fun on top of a lady when her hair is full of shiny little machines & your ass reflected in that television screen, who wants to be a poet if you fuck on t.v. & all those cowboys watching.

At a college in Dearborn, Michigan, I read a poem about watching girls at camp hold their breaths under the showers so I could see their breasts swell. Some people call Dearborn a hub of “terrorist” activity. I’ve placed the word terrorist between quotation marks because “Arab” or “Muslim” or “people who look like the terrorists we fear” is what they mean. In the poem about the camp I also use quotation marks around the words “pussy” and “chicken-shit,” but for different reasons — I’m waiting in line to jump over a dam into a river where other boys have drowned, and I hesitate, until someone shouts “pussy” and “chicken-shit” and you don’t need me to tell you what I did, what I had to do. A famous poet says for a speaker to express authority, he must possess three virtues, one of which is passion. After the reading a young man approached me. He turned out to be the younger brother of someone I knew and wrote a poem about, a lifeguard who saved a drowning girl. The child pulled from the pool could have been a boy — I don’t remember, it doesn’t matter. I care about what I’m saying — that matters. Passion is a deep-seated conviction, says the famous poet. You need to believe that I believe. I told the young man in Dearborn about his brother saving a life, as if he didn’t already know. He listened, politely, until I stopped talking and then he said I was out of line and had acted inappropriately. How, I asked. He said I shouldn’t use words like that. Which words, I asked. He was getting flustered. I asked him again. I wanted him to say “pussy” and “chicken-shit.” He said I should not use words like that in front of women. By “women,” he meant Arab and Muslim women. Maybe he meant all women. I don’t know, I didn’t ask. A lot of Arabs and Muslims live in Dearborn. That’s why some people think of it as a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. The phrase “a hotbed of Islamic terrorism” should probably appear between quotes every time people use it, even if they are Arab or Muslim, like me. The other virtues a speaker should possess, says the famous poet, are discrimination and inclusiveness. By “discrimination” he means the speaker should come to his position without ignoring but considering opposed positions, and finding them wanting. By “inclusiveness” he means the speaker immediately sees connections between the subject at hand and other issues. Also, the speaker needs to make the reader believe he is doing his subject justice, that he is relating it to the world. This makes his voice communal, speaking not for any community but with the goal of making communities, the first of which is that of speaker and reader. The young man speaking on behalf of Arab and Muslim women told me that my poems were “indecent” and “immoral,” that I should be ashamed, that I was a terrible Muslim. “Go fuck yourself,” is what I wanted to say, but — maybe he was right — so I smiled, I thanked him for listening, and I told him I loved his brother, and, “Please, will you say I said hello.”

1. It unfolds and ripples like a banner, downward.  All the stories come folding out.  The smells and flowers begin to come back, as the tapestry is brightly colored and brocaded.  Rabbits and violets. Who asked you to come over?  She got her foot in the door and would not remove it, elbowing and talking swiftly.  Gas leak? that sounds like a very existential position; perhaps you had better check with the landlord. This was no better than the predicament I had just read about.  Now it was actually changing before my eyes.  Sometimes it will come to a standstill though, and finally the reflection can begin. Selfless—that was the proposition.  Smiling and moving instantly there was no other purpose than that which brought them there, to be in a particular place. 2. This time the mule gave its face away.  Take your cadillac where you want to go in the morning, convertible as it might be, and enjoy a good bottle of rum. Running on this way she used various modes of expression that were current.  Nothing seemed to bring the woods any closer. What Woods, she was questioned, realizing that as far as the woods went, they were largely inhabitable through the facility of her mind.  At the Philadelphia Flower Show, an ideal situation was built up.  Here through various regulated artificial conditions, spring grass, waterfalls, the newly-sprouted bulbs completed her ideal concept of nature.  The smell was overpowering. All right then.  She had a thing about nature, from flower show glamor and enormous greenhouses the rich cultivated. A beauty of cultivation—in living?  Hastiness did not prevent her from rising quick and ready to misnomers and other odd conclusions, throwing the telephone book to the floor, “OH OH the life I am entangled in.”  Four sides of it. Above was a paradisical level, incompleted.  With working possibilities. Below, endless preoccupations and variations were possible. Currently in vogue were shelves, the vacuum cleaner, a new bedspread and color scheme for pillows. Taste treats were unresponsive.  Glamor do’s were out.  Conversation was nil. Languid she could not even find a place to languish upon that was fulfilling in its own way. So out of the lifelessness that was around her, the grape leaves drying out, and even though the avocado was sprouting, she thought, Why not fantasy?  Tugging at this character and that, trying to push a little life in a prince or a charmer, a half- blind bat, dryad, the works of the story teller.  Here the four walls of the room and ceiling became apparent again.  “I ought to tighten down and make sure I say exactly what I mean.” And her face took on a tight pinched expression, and thrifty scotch economy gave her shrewd eyes in the prescribed way.  Use every tidbit,usefully.  Once upon a time there was a princess who had a long white fur coat with a high fluffy collar, and inside the coat were stitched beautiful butterflies in many bright colors. The princess languished.  She was not sure where to sit to her best advantage to enjoy herself the most.  She could not go in her mind or out.  She looked at her long white hand, I am the Queen of the High Mountain Hag, she murmured to herself, still knowing she was a princess.  She lay down upon the floor as if it were the garden of eden, the coat spread around her. No, that poor little house she had built was a bore.  It’s better that it go up in flames, as it did. She went down to Grand Central Station and gave away flowers. Some people took them and some people didn’t. 3. I’m glad to get back.  I had to repeat a rough discontinuous journey. Questioning myself all along the way.  Was I jumping on her because her time had come to an end.  Indeed I pounded on his arm all night, over his concern for this soft-spoken individual, I can see nothing but their softness.  Me ME, and the time we might spend together, reading and talking, to tear away that putrid husk. My flippancy is gone.  Now I have started my secret life again, in transition, reminding.  As the moth reminds, its feeble antenna groping, taken like a stalk of fern, coins of money. All over I was shaking as the fear and tension made itself apparent. It was a cold night out.  It was colder still between the airy gaps, between blankets. You can see she is thoughtful as she draws the string to the bow.  Where to go indeed.  The point is brought forward and discussed very cleverly. A sleeping angel or a sleeping troll?  I was rather proud of being used, pushing the clothing hampers up and down the downtown street.  Here, pleasant mentors conveyed their anxious solicitations, drawing from their bags, long lists of memorandum due, what I owed. It was a lot, if I hesitated.  I choose to go on, saying this is the way I go, owing nothing, being that kind of person.  Hung up? That thought intrudes as the clearly marked vista is not so clearly marked.  Certainly one supposes in all honesty, that an essential core of feeling blooms in each encounter.  Lost under the weight of the garbage of who are you that you are not making apparent. Thus unhappy, I don’t want it to be this way, and so forth. Not costumes, or paraphernalia, the immediate reactions. 4. We of course are in a family situation.  Anything I wish might happen, but the larger situations are not real, not to be considered possible, discussable as to what sense of reality they possessed. In the snow, the wood piled up underneath.  Oh those drifting sensibilities.  At this point it is scarcely believable that people gather and like each other.  Eating chocolate pudding, getting in touch with some other sense of alikeness.  The form is no longer obvious to me.  Whether they meander or are joined together in their senses in the mechanics or regular grooves they run along. I suspect that in this house, this place that is musty and left as it was some years ago, there is no real fear; the objects are old and I am not familiar with them, only the sense that the Ghost or spirit world strikes you with its familiarity, pleasurable fear. Here the familiar is apt to make its presence known, at any moment the unexpected lurk in the hall, into the room.  Pieces of leather, old silken fans laid upon the table top, rooms filled with something left unexpectedly terror is the wrong combination of ignorance.  It contains its own self with dusty fragments of velvet and fringe.  100 pieces of voice with no name, called it myself, as they spoke all day, sucking the soft slush, admitting their real deficiencies as— I am never sure; Oh it’s that power and disease of believing in the stale that doesn’t demand a real climate, takes its capacity when the demons come down. 5. The night passes in night time.  The head moving to the shoulder, the head rising with a frown. In a firm voice, it doesn’t matter if the hair is flying from undue spring breezes, the self has been raptured on the wine that produces appropriate madness, and sad she says, my dear the bacchanal is a lovely way to be rid of waste. However, in seeing the house more manageable, one cannot even have fear larger than the unknown portions of the continent which refuses to sink. There once was a woman who grew older, not that she minded, but the passage of time was always constant.  Why does one have to contend with that she said, puzzled, as she got carried along, and constantly had to think up new coping modes of behavior.  If he behaved to me thus when he was 40, now that I am 30, I can hardly behave like that to those that are 20, and so forth.  There wasn’t any model except the one she built, and one could scarcely believe there was no established pattern.  This offered wonderful possibilities, but also indecision and gutlessness. 6. You can’t see them, all bundled up, all those that choose to move other than where the distance seems appealing.  Knowledge has no depth.  There isn’t any message to be spoken. Wrangling, she speaks ill-advised my dear, as the cat has no point in laying its head down.  She ought to watch carefully. The claws.  It could be the bent hands, as they grow, that as the fur impeaches the rose, doesn’t make the thing she hangs her body on any realer. What could it be all about?  The necessity to follow, balancing, contemplating words, as the basis of why we move at all. Just a little touch.  The leader cautioned further progression. I could hardly listen to the music for long.  Now there seemed to be interruptions, pleasurable interludes, nothing definite, of a fragmented nature. Certainly I wished the best for all.  The sadder soldiers stumbled idly, as I also in the profound reaches of my slumber noted the elegant turns, the twisting statements grooving into the language building something to listen to.  The dress made from silk.  Trusting was awkward and not of a nature to ease any further building.  Whosoever you revere will come back tenfold upon you and lighten the burden carried as those who desire the warmth and necessity of communication. 7. I am sure my dreams must have been of the wrong sort.  However, as dreams are reflections of inner dilemmas, how did those arise, from a day of relaxation and summer enjoyment of the fund. Knowledge comes from what purported strike?  From that which cleanses, and let us knot say “heart” but tissue.  Hopefully and helpfully I have built up a language in which to talk myself to sleep.  Not for purposes of letting in the cold. However, I have found that not all blockaded against is the cold, the dreary reign of the dead, etc., and tasteless realm of the mushroom.  As much can be denied as the bilious sun strives to cause an enlargement of singing in the back of the neck and the head.  That is uncorraled ecstasy.  I call it enthusiasm, free energy. But it has no place to land, it is bursting and unfocused; it is a real force and the counterpart of the gloomy depths. As the pieces of the house ooze sap, blossoms and green twigs burst from the cracks.  Whether or not to join in what I was half committed to see and do. 8. At this point, when Jack picked up the pussy willow branches, I said they can’t possibly be ours for the taking, and smiled with dedication to an older Con Edison man.  The buildings were like the unexplored garbage in my mind, fascinating and dirty, pulling pieces of cloth from boxes left overnight.  Energy as limitless possibility, in the attempt to transmit non-energy situations. For example, if once I stop to realize what little gets through, I am much more interested in the cover than the contents; it is difficult to find any interest in anything.  Good energy displaces bad karma. And other non entities like that sort, producing flow that in its own place has a good bed, stocked well with what can be called fleet-footed fishes, and approaching places of investigation, such as relations between. As I saw the blood flow to the surface of his skin, I forgot to watch for the telltale visions that again might come from something I have never seen; more possibly the components of what every man views.  If this was a possibility, the rays from every person converging pass through the state of shock to numbness to unity without any mind at all, for this horror fits the cat on the stairs, between the fifth and sixth rung.  This is the way people glow and pulse similar to an inlet of jellyfish blocking the way, full of human life; until I who will name myself a swimmer come along and refuse to be blocked on the way, although I turn back gladly, and will again swim through for it is possible they do not kill, the sting’s compounded measure is fear, and thus one not need join the broad expanse of human mouths calling people to join their ranks to comfort their newfound recognition or orifices, stomachs and legs. I reminded myself twice there were several stories that kept continuing themselves.  She ignored her face, blotched and red upon times, but fuller.  Did you forget to wax and wane?  Her head was full of energy brought forward and positively that what was said would turn the obvious into color, but no sense.  Sense was for the thinkers.  Here the thinkers forgot their word orders or sense; it was better to give them coffee, and those off worse could smoke. I had felt very foolish when I leaned forward and grasped his hand, with effort, and his cloak slipped down over one shoulder as he shouted, which is the way.  And I followed for certainly no one would follow me.  As the day is cold and colder, and what comes out of the head is of its own sort and nature.  These words, like Nature, and Head, Thinking and Words, repeat themselves, as the lines of landscape, attics and other closed-off sections have reprimanded themselves by repetition.  Light was such an enormous possibility.  Taking sight into a frenzy, it was possible that just to look was full of excitement and wonder, for ages at a time, things appeared as beautiful, the sky, the street where cars had gone by. I worried about certain characters: ones that never seemed to be other than puzzles to me but I was drawn to them with certainty only because there seemed to be no understanding? As when the mysteries were performed, the house then itself became distilled with reason as the pots and pans were used apparently filled with the stuff of continuity.  The sorrow that each day sinks into the infertile other side of day, where voice comes out of the dark, and does its rituals.  Memory has its own screen across the room to view itself, and the continuous dwelling of conjecture takes permanent form in stiff-legged walks to remind, thus on and on the breathing goes. New York. January – March, 1967

What do you mean by rashes of ash? Is industry systematic work, assiduous activity, or ownership of factories? Is ripple agitate lightly? Are we tossed in tune when we write poems? And what or who emboss with gloss insignias of air? Is the Fabric about which you write in the epigraph of your poem an edifice, a symbol of heaven? Does freight refer to cargo of lading carried for pay by water, land or air? Or does it mean payment for such transportation? Or a freight train? When you say a commoded journey, do you mean a comfortable journey or a good train with well-equipped commodoties? But, then, why do you drop the ‘a’ before slumberous friend? And when you write, in “Why I Am Not a Christian” You always throw it down / But you never pick it up

child, in the august of your life you come barefoot to me the blisters of events having worn through to the soles of your shoes. it is not the time this is not the time there is no such time to tell you that some pains ease away on the ebb & toll of themselves. there is no such dream that can not fail, nor is hope our only conquest. we can stand boldly in burdening places (like earth here) in our blunderings, our bloomings our palms, flattened upward or pressed, an unyielding down.

The cat wants to be a strong thing—a hand, a tree. The girl wants to be a pirate, in a tree. The tree wants to be the pond with its face of shining. The pond wants to be the sun who dumps its sugar on the grass. The grass wants to be the foot, its sole, its heel. The foot wants to be the brain who always gets to choose. The brain wants to be the feet dumb in their shoes. The shoe wants to be the buckle that the girl shines with a cloth. The buckle wants to be the magpie lifting what shines. The magpie wants to be the egg in the nest touching its brother. The egg wants to be the feather. The feather wants to be the mite, devouring its plume.