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When I go into the garden, there she is. The specter holds up her arms to show that her hands are eaten off. She is silent because of the agony. There is blood on her face. I can see she has done this to herself. So she would not feel the other pain. And it is true, she does not feel it. She does not even see me. It is not she anymore, but the pain itself that moves her. I look and think how to forget. How can I live while she stands there? And if I take her life what will that make of me? I cannot touch her, make her conscious. It would hurt her too much. I hear the sound all through the air that was her eating, but it is on its own now, completely separate from her. I think I am supposed to look. I am not supposed to turn away. I am supposed to see each detail and all expression gone. My God, I think, if paradise is to be here it will have to include her.

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile; He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

He crackles the air in big fist because it is turning, the night’s spine and the fast floor of last year is now the wall of this Those cracks should be flowers but there is no light nor lights in the windless binnacle strewn a slow rate of thought in the broad attention What is shorn to say and then to leave awake in the sleep, the pen without its cap the numbers that will harm if not arrayed The windows are not blank, the dark not empty but solid as the mask held loose before the eyeless active ridden hive The sounds of the mind entire are the wind below at the valley floor then a thumping above as of rocks at work painting the wall Turn out the lights and think invisibly stain the turn of time and hear the year before it’s there

you have lipstick on your collar I say to my father the priest that’s just the Blood of   Christ my son he replies by and by (the milky thigh of   Mary in my mind) William Blake’s eyes aligning in the snow a statue outside London simply called “The Heretic” where birds sit and shit and live out their days in unconscious praise of that third space between language and the mute object as sunlight pours through the stained glass at the Lincoln Park Zoo where I saw the lions pacing and you told me to always remember that the cage is for the protection of   the captor

Brave comrade, answer! When you joined the war, What left you? “Wife and children, wealth and friends, A storied home whose ancient roof-tree bends Above such thoughts as love tells o’er and o’er.” Had you no pang or struggle? “Yes; I bore Such pain on parting as at hell’s gate rends The entering soul, when from its grasp ascends The last faint virtue which on earth it wore.” You loved your home, your kindred, children, wife; You loathed yet plunged into war’s bloody whirl!— What urged you? “Duty! Something more than life. That which made Abraham bare the priestly knife, And Isaac kneel, or that young Hebrew girl Who sought her father coming from the strife.”

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest, Now is the time that face should form another, Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose uneared womb Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry? Or who is he so fond will be the tomb Of his self-love, to stop posterity? Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime; So thou through windows of thine age shalt see, Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. But if thou live rememb’red not to be, Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard, Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow: They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight, Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had Past reason hated as a swallowed bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit and in possession so, Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate, Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving. O, but with mine compare thou thine own state, And thou shalt find it merits not reproving; Or if it do, not from those lips of thine, That have profaned their scarlet ornaments And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robbed others’ beds’ revenues of their rents. Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov’st those Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee: Root pity in thy heart, that, when it grows, Thy pity may deserve to pitied be. If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied.