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This is the multitude, the beasts you wanted to show me, drawing me upstream, all morning up through wind- scoured heather to the hillcrest. Below us, in the next glen, is the grave calm brotherhood, descended out of winter, out of hunger, kneeling like the signatories of a covenant; their weighty, antique-polished antlers rising above the vegetation like masts in a harbor, or city spires. We lie close together, and though the wind whips away our man-and-woman smell, every stag-face seems to look toward us, toward, but not to us: we’re held, and hold them, in civil regard. I suspect you’d hoped to impress me, to lift to my sight our shared country, lead me deeper into what you know, but loath to cause fear you’re already moving quietly away, sure I’ll go with you, as I would now, almost anywhere.

"And then there were three whereas before there had been four or two And then there were four or two." Thus spake the King. No one dared ask what it meant. He seemed satisfied by the beauty of the logic that had arrived, the royal hall now lightly radiant as he arose from his throne and the world fell away, courtiers, battlements, and clouds, and he rose like a piece of paper on which his effigy had been traced in dotted lines whose dots came loose and flew away to a place in history where nothing mattered. And then there was one.

It seems a certain fear underlies everything. If I were to tell you something profound it would be useless, as every single thing I know is not timeless. I am particularly risk-averse. I choose someone else over me every time, as I'm sure they'll finish the task at hand, which is to say that whatever is in front of us will get done if I'm not in charge of it. There is a limit to the number of times I can practice every single kind of mortification (of the flesh?). I can turn toward you and say yes, it was you in the poem

A recent piece in PRAVDA gives the library books checked out by Stalin between April and December, 1926. Much has been made of their oddity... Robert Conquest I THE ESSENCE OF HYPNOSIS (Paris: LeGrande, 1902)

The light so thick nothing’s visible, cognoscenti I knew them, stupid apes. Real apes know more Before we said apes. I know how to be you bet- ter — a stupid voice. You must find a mind to respect — why? There was someone with ear buds, speaking gibberish who wouldn’t stop walking beside me; freckle-spattered. I had to ask the métro attendant for help; she extricated him from me ... I respect his chaotic speech, mild adhesive force because it makes no sense. I am back on the alley, discovering adults are un- trustworthy: someone’s lying ... about a fight between a teenage girl and boy — he pushed her hard — first she badly scratched him, she’s worse, his mother says. I’m back at pre-beginning, I don’t want to go through that again. There is no sexuality in chaos, there’s no style, nor hope. I want style — apes have style, people have machines. Show me something to respect This bleuet growing out of a wall on rue d’Hauteville. I picked it and pressed it in a diary. Every once in a while I respect a moment. I am back at pre-beginning: I don’t want to care beyond this ... sudden hue in the sand, yellow or spotted with an hallucinated iridescence. The one who is stalking me ... there has often been someone stalk- ing me. My destiny. He’s gone, stay here in this, I can’t be harmed if I’m the only one who’s thought of being here. Aren’t you lonely? I don’t know.

Bibiana: Wanting to get close to one’s abuser is no sickness. Wanting to create a cocoon of normalcy when one is subjected to a crime is no syndrome.

Stand whoso list upon the slipper top Of court’s estates, and let me here rejoice; And use me quiet without let or stop, Unknown in court, that hath such brackish joys: In hidden place, so let my days forth pass, That when my years be done, withouten noise, I may die agèd after the common trace, For him death gripeth right hard by the crope That is much known of other; and of himself alas, Doth die unknown, dazed with dreadful face.

Standing at a desk of cranberries     a small triumph of jumps     I wait longer than the rescue of rains     I send prayers to the terror walking north I do a pantomime on the edge of the cliff     overreacting to the sea and the creatures in back of the house     if  you had just looked out I would have said this is my little resonance The guile of parrots     a carnival     a killing     a crusade    the final 
pursuit either a panorama or a demon The fan click refuses to stop or to cancel its insistence     stubborn in the face of carnage     the once famous once child fortunes     the fifty days of posters     all the field deaths     all the cries of Jimmy! Caddie! Victor! Are you coming? Today not to beard but to wear black     today not to trace the creases on my face     today caught in parts     today to bicep toward justice but not to beard     as if that were even a possibility     even with lasers and goats     an ocean of black dogs and boats     searching for better swells     a more favorable forecast     a mast out of water     I want what the pelican sees An answer comes in the smell of woodsmoke as he passes     by a personal note at the slope of his neck    trials of bridges and the moon alongside Pont Marie     I follow that smell with the O of sails and sorted shoes     with brushes and the corners of candles     a firm clap then the rubber stickiness of stones     I follow the tremble with the white noise of busses and a can of coins     surrounded by Joyce and daughter     blind on a broken chair     hearing cobbles I’m just like you     some dying     some grief     some scotch     my final please unhooked from fire and earrings     knees in the grass     sinking into the sorted dirt     my beach a tree pleading with the summer surf    walking or chased    a finned orange fish that sucks at my sleep    a morning trail in lavender musk     preacher mounds    a human fever    a corner room settled in blue plaid    a pot of red bowls     a curtain of frames     a pitted eye    a hill    a chimney     a pear Where would these words be without a subject?    little carvings of mosquitoes landing on my hands     headaches digging an elision of craters     a great empty blow of air that follows my feet    the big lumber of my dog’s no longer here     his hair an excursion still fluttering on the tile     slush and whispered breath     where the naked man on the street washes his back with purple flowers You keep saying boy like it’s the belt that was used to tie you to the bed     you keep saying bull like you were forced to fight     you keep saying dragon as if courage had no sound     you keep saying hair and crib like babies come out of shells From button to button     what spunky rope    what cold claustrophobe    what caravan of pack dogs    what kink and rocky tunnels do I have to sliver through     every exhausted moon    batteries dwindling toward unnameable and permanent night     my knees pray the floor will open to a new city A door to my back     the molding cheesy and rectal     I run with the horses across the field     the town wiped off the track and left behind    you curl up at the back of my neck and we go bucking over the whole knot of trails     the whole veiny land

My only love sprung  from my only hate! — Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene v At forty, I studied the mirror. I poked my mouth to free a trapped grain of hamburger, and a tooth broke off  between my fingers. I felt nothing. The dentist said:The tooth is dead. The root is dead. The X-rays show signs of trauma to the lower jaw. What happened here?

Because in medieval Italian it meant “room” I tied the curtains at their elbows with what could have been honor cords or worse yet, a belt from the 60s, so hideous were the tassels that were dancing a little tarantella after I had propped the windows and the wind had carried in the song the rubbing trees were making, without any accompaniment, mind you, from a tambourine, although the bells of   the occasional sleigh played that part, while I waited for the vixen and their shameless yelping to follow the music and the cold and the night inside where I sat half man, half snow, to investigate my squeaking pencil and the flapping of the bird-white page I couldn’t seem to catch in those years when I lugged around a frozen heart and was infatuated with whiteness, since I had read somewhere it was the absence of color, which could not be true since I had once loved a pure white duck with a white bill and feet and I had even torn its white flesh with my teeth that were still then white, which should have been all the proof anyone needed to debunk our outdated theories of absence.