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Thanksgiving Day I like to see Our cook perform her witchery. She turns a pumpkin into pie As easily as you or I Can wave a hand or wink an eye. She takes leftover bread and muffin And changes them to turkey stuffin’. She changes cranberries to sauce And meats to stews and stews to broths; And when she mixes gingerbread It turns into a man instead With frosting collar ’round his throat And raisin buttons down his coat. Oh, some like magic made by wands, And some read magic out of books, And some like fairy spells and charms But I like magic made by cooks!

Lord, Thou hast given me a cell Wherein to dwell, A little house, whose humble roof Is weather-proof: Under the spars of which I lie Both soft, and dry; Where Thou my chamber for to ward Hast set a guard Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep Me, while I sleep. Low is my porch, as is my fate, Both void of state; And yet the threshold of my door Is worn by th' poor, Who thither come and freely get Good words, or meat. Like as my parlour, so my hall And kitchen's small; A little buttery, and therein A little bin, Which keeps my little loaf of bread Unchipp'd, unflead; Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar Make me a fire, Close by whose living coal I sit, And glow like it. Lord, I confess too, when I dine, The pulse is Thine, And all those other bits, that be There plac'd by Thee; The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water-cress, Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent; And my content Makes those, and my beloved beet, To be more sweet. 'Tis Thou that crown'st my glittering hearth With guiltless mirth; And giv'st me wassail-bowls to drink, Spic'd to the brink. Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand That soils my land; And giv'st me, for my bushel sown, Twice ten for one; Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day; Besides my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year; The while the conduits of my kine Run cream, for wine. All these, and better, Thou dost send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankful heart, Which, fir'd with incense, I resign, As wholly Thine; But the acceptance, that must be, My Christ, by Thee.

We who are here present thank the Great Spirit that we are here to praise Him. We thank Him that He has created men and women, and ordered that these beings shall always be living to multiply the earth. We thank Him for making the earth and giving these beings its products to live on. We thank Him for the water that comes out of the earth and runs for our lands. We thank Him for all the animals on the earth. We thank Him for certain timbers that grow and have fluids coming from them for us all. We thank Him for the branches of the trees that grow shadows for our shelter. We thank Him for the beings that come from the west, the thunder and lightning that water the earth. We thank Him for the light which we call our oldest brother, the sun that works for our good. We thank Him for all the fruits that grow on the trees and vines. We thank Him for his goodness in making the forests, and thank all its trees. We thank Him for the darkness that gives us rest, and for the kind Being of the darkness that gives us light, the moon. We thank Him for the bright spots in the skies that give us signs, the stars. We give Him thanks for our supporters, who had charge of our harvests. We give thanks that the voice of the Great Spirit can still be heard through the words of Ga-ne-o-di-o. We thank the Great Spirit that we have the privilege of this pleasant occasion. We give thanks for the persons who can sing the Great Spirit's music, and hope they will be privileged to continue in his faith. We thank the Great Spirit for all the persons who perform the ceremonies on this occasion.

That autumn was abundant In Istanbul the ancient and platinum Women with their faces covered and discovered My grandfather arrived on foot to this Ottoman city From the desolate Sebastopol and from other burned villages, From the bloody snow. He spoke about its minarets Certainly he loved the fields of leaves. Autumn, like a river or a glowing bonfire And I don't know where he went to pray, Or perhaps he no longer did so in the city of the sultans But I know in his mouth he carried a needle Noble metaphor of his trade. Perhaps he wandered astonished throughout lovely Istanbul Searching for sustenance or clients Perhaps inclined, he entered one of the thousand mosques Where he prayed While the clocks stood still, Geographies were erased. Because the city was merely a golden breeze falling upon the leaves A multitude of lights upon the holy minarets, My grandfather, A Jewish tailor also took refuge in Istanbul Also another small Jewish city Among the thresholds of history.

The grey sky, lighter & darker greys, lights between & delicate lavenders also blue-greys in smaller strokes, & swashes of mauve-grey on the Hudson— openings of light to the blue oblong off-center where the door to the warehouse shows— the larger smearings darkening deep into blues So alight that sky, late August, early evening, I had to gasp at it, stand there hardly moving to breathe it,       using whatever my body gave me, at that moment       attending to it, thinking: Turner, he should have seen it, he would have given it back to us, not let it die away And that other evening, walking down Bank Street from marketing, the sky fiery over the river, luminous but hot in its flowering also, rich in color as Venice seen by Guardi—more aflame even, the sky moving in a pulse, its fire breathing in a pulse verging on danger—mane of a lioness affronted. That brilliance—the eye of the lion filled to the lids with flame And his eyes, Turner's, that bright grey eye at seventy-six, "brilliant as the eye of a child" who grew his thumbnail in the shape of an eagle's claw, the better to use it in painting In Kirby Lonsdale, Yorkshire, where Turner first drew mountain-landscapes, I found Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell

That child was dangerous. That just-born Newly washed and silent baby Wrapped in deerskin and held warm Against the side of its mother could understand The language of birds and animals Even when asleep. It knew why Bluejay Was scolding the bushes, what Hawk was explaining To the wind on the cliffside, what Bittern had found out While standing alone in marsh grass. It knew What the screams of Fox and the whistling of Otter Were telling the forest. That child knew The language of Fire As it gnawed at sticks like Beaver And what Water said all day and all night At the creek's mouth. As its small fingers Closed around Stone, it held what Stone was saying. It knew what Bear Mother whispered to herself Under the snow. It could not tell Anyone what it knew. It would laugh Or cry out or startle or suddenly stare At nothing, but had no way To repeat what it was hearing, what it wanted most Not to remember. It had no way to know Why it would fall under a spell And lie still as if not breathing, Having grown afraid Of what it could understand. That child would learn To sit and crawl and stand and begin Putting one foot forward and following it With the other, would learn to put one word It could barely remember slightly ahead Of the other and then walk and speak And finally run and chatter, And all the Tillamook would know that child Had forgotten everything and at last could listen Only to people and was safe now.

This is about the women of that country Sometimes they spoke in slogans They said We patch the roads as we patch our sweetheart’s trousers The heart will stop but not the transport They said We have ensured production even near bomb craters Children let your voices sing higher than the explosions of the bombs They said We have important tasks to teach the children that the people are the collective masters to bear hardship to instill love in the family to guide the good health of the children (they must wear clothing according to climate) They said Once men beat their wives now they may not Once a poor family sold its daughter to a rich old man now the young may love one another They said Once we planted our rice any old way now we plant the young shoots in straight rows so the imperialist pilot can see how steady our hands are In the evening we walked along the shores of the Lake of the Restored Sword I said   is it true?   we are sisters? They said   Yes, we are of one family

My damn cat brings me a dead songbird, wren or finch, I don’t know what it is— I mistook at first its folded grey for a strangely shaped piece of lint in the cubicle beneath my desk—nor which cat for I have two: Cricket with her dense body and stubby legs who jumps down from every shelf so reverberatingly, I call her the Black Bomb, or Ingrid, the quiet Russian Blue, whom I call Gritty because her coat is stealthy with dust. They’re always leaving me offerings—the mouse upon the threshold when I return from some trip, the redheaded grosbeak on the sill— but death is different in the front yard or even on the threshold, than Death on a particular morning, crawling into the house, carrying a warm form frozen in its warm mouth, tongue and tooth salivating a fluff of warble and whistle into a smoothly folded, iced, silenced thing, Death triumphant,affectionate! as if anyone would be happy feeding upon dead songs torn from the air.

By the last few times we saw her it was clear That things were different. When you tried to help her Get out of the car or get from the car to the door Or across the apartment house hall to the elevator There was a new sense of heaviness Or of inertia in the body. It wasn’t That she was less willing to be helped to walk But that the walking itself had become less willing. Maybe the stupid demogorgon blind Recalcitrance of body, resentful of the laws Of mind and spirit, was getting its own back now, Or maybe a new and subtle, alien, Intelligence of body was obedient now To other laws: “Weight is the measure of The force with which a body is drawn downward To the center of the earth”; “Inertia is The tendency of a body to resist Proceeding to its fate in any way Other than that determined for itself.” That evening, at the Bromells’ apartment, after She had been carried up through the rational structure By articulate stages, floor after flashing floor, And after we helped her get across the hall, And get across the room to a chair, somehow We got her seated in a chair that was placed A little too far away from the nearest table, At the edge of the abyss, and there she sat, Exposed, her body the object of our attention— The heaviness of it, the helpless graceless leg, The thick stocking, the leg brace, the medical shoe. At work between herself and us there was A new principle of social awkwardness And skillfulness required of each of us. Our tones of voice in this easy conversation Were instruments of marvelous finesse, Measuring and maintaining with exactitude “The fact or condition of the difference There was between us, both in space and time.” Her smiling made her look as if she had Just then tasted something delicious, the charm Her courtesy attributed to her friends. This decent elegant fellow human being Was seated in virtue, character, disability, Behind her the order of the ranged bookshelves, The windows monitored by Venetian blinds— “These can be raised or lowered; numerous slats, Horizontally arranged, and parallel, Which can be tilted so as to admit Precisely the desired light or air.” We were all her friends, Maggie, and Bill, and Anne, And I, and the nice Boston Brahmin elderly man Named Duncan, utterly friendly and benign. And of course it wasn’t whether or not the world Was benign but whether it looked at her too much. She wasn’t “painfully shy” but just the same I wouldn’t be surprised if there had been Painfulness in her shyness earlier on, Say at dancing school. Like others, though, she had Survived her childhood somehow. Nor do I mean She was unhappy. Maybe more or less so Before her marriage. One had the sense of trips Arranged, committees, concerts, baffled courage Living it through, giving it order and style. And one had the sense of the late marriage as of Two bafflements inventing the sense they made Together. The marriage seemed, to the outside world, And probably was, radiant and triumphant, And I think that one could almost certainly say That during the last, heroic, phase of things, After his death, and after the stroke, she had By force of character and careful management, Maintained a certain degree of happiness. The books there on the bookshelves told their stories, Line after line, all of them evenly spaced, And spaces between the words. You could fall through the spaces. In one of the books Dr. Johnson told the story: “In the scale of being, wherever it begins, Or ends, there are chasms infinitely deep; Infinite vacuities...For surely, Nothing can so disturb the passions, or Perplex the intellects of man so much, As the disruption of this union with Visible nature, separation from all That has delighted or engaged him, a change Not only of the place but of the manner Of his being, an entrance into a state Not simply which he knows not, but perhaps A state he has not faculties to know.” The dinner was delicious, fresh greens, and reds, And yellows, produce of the season due, And fish from the nearby sea; and there were also Ashes to be eaten, and dirt to drink.

By the last few times we saw her it was clear That things were different. When you tried to help her Get out of the car or get from the car to the door Or across the apartment house hall to the elevator There was a new sense of heaviness Or of inertia in the body. It wasn’t That she was less willing to be helped to walk But that the walking itself had become less willing. Maybe the stupid demogorgon blind Recalcitrance of body, resentful of the laws Of mind and spirit, was getting its own back now, Or maybe a new and subtle, alien, Intelligence of body was obedient now To other laws: “Weight is the measure of The force with which a body is drawn downward To the center of the earth”; “Inertia is The tendency of a body to resist Proceeding to its fate in any way Other than that determined for itself.” That evening, at the Bromells’ apartment, after She had been carried up through the rational structure By articulate stages, floor after flashing floor, And after we helped her get across the hall, And get across the room to a chair, somehow We got her seated in a chair that was placed A little too far away from the nearest table, At the edge of the abyss, and there she sat, Exposed, her body the object of our attention— The heaviness of it, the helpless graceless leg, The thick stocking, the leg brace, the medical shoe. At work between herself and us there was A new principle of social awkwardness And skillfulness required of each of us. Our tones of voice in this easy conversation Were instruments of marvelous finesse, Measuring and maintaining with exactitude “The fact or condition of the difference There was between us, both in space and time.” Her smiling made her look as if she had Just then tasted something delicious, the charm Her courtesy attributed to her friends. This decent elegant fellow human being Was seated in virtue, character, disability, Behind her the order of the ranged bookshelves, The windows monitored by Venetian blinds— “These can be raised or lowered; numerous slats, Horizontally arranged, and parallel, Which can be tilted so as to admit Precisely the desired light or air.” We were all her friends, Maggie, and Bill, and Anne, And I, and the nice Boston Brahmin elderly man Named Duncan, utterly friendly and benign. And of course it wasn’t whether or not the world Was benign but whether it looked at her too much. She wasn’t “painfully shy” but just the same I wouldn’t be surprised if there had been Painfulness in her shyness earlier on, Say at dancing school. Like others, though, she had Survived her childhood somehow. Nor do I mean She was unhappy. Maybe more or less so Before her marriage. One had the sense of trips Arranged, committees, concerts, baffled courage Living it through, giving it order and style. And one had the sense of the late marriage as of Two bafflements inventing the sense they made Together. The marriage seemed, to the outside world, And probably was, radiant and triumphant, And I think that one could almost certainly say That during the last, heroic, phase of things, After his death, and after the stroke, she had By force of character and careful management, Maintained a certain degree of happiness. The books there on the bookshelves told their stories, Line after line, all of them evenly spaced, And spaces between the words. You could fall through the spaces. In one of the books Dr. Johnson told the story: “In the scale of being, wherever it begins, Or ends, there are chasms infinitely deep; Infinite vacuities ... For surely, Nothing can so disturb the passions, or Perplex the intellects of man so much, As the disruption of this union with Visible nature, separation from all That has delighted or engaged him, a change Not only of the place but of the manner Of his being, an entrance into a state Not simply which he knows not, but perhaps A state he has not faculties to know.” The dinner was delicious, fresh greens, and reds, And yellows, produce of the season due, And fish from the nearby sea; and there were also Ashes to be eaten, and dirt to drink.