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In the sweet shire of Cardigan, Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall, An old Man dwells, a little man,— 'Tis said he once was tall. For five-and-thirty years he lived A running huntsman merry; And still the centre of his cheek Is red as a ripe cherry. No man like him the horn could sound, And hill and valley rang with glee When Echo bandied, round and round The halloo of Simon Lee. In those proud days, he little cared For husbandry or tillage; To blither tasks did Simon rouse The sleepers of the village. He all the country could outrun, Could leave both man and horse behind; And often, ere the chase was done, He reeled, and was stone-blind. And still there's something in the world At which his heart rejoices; For when the chiming hounds are out, He dearly loves their voices! But, oh the heavy change!—bereft Of health, strength, friends, and kindred, see! Old Simon to the world is left In liveried poverty. His Master's dead—and no one now Dwells in the Hall of Ivor; Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead; He is the sole survivor. And he is lean and he is sick; His body, dwindled and awry, Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; His legs are thin and dry. One prop he has, and only one, His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Upon the village Common. Beside their moss-grown hut of clay, Not twenty paces from the door, A scrap of land they have, but they Are poorest of the poor. This scrap of land he from the heath Enclosed when he was stronger; But what to them avails the land Which he can till no longer? Oft, working by her Husband's side, Ruth does what Simon cannot do; For she, with scanty cause for pride, Is stouter of the two. And, though you with your utmost skill From labour could not wean them, 'Tis little, very little—all That they can do between them. Few months of life has he in store As he to you will tell, For still, the more he works, the more Do his weak ankles swell. My gentle Reader, I perceive, How patiently you've waited, And now I fear that you expect Some tale will be related. O Reader! had you in your mind Such stores as silent thought can bring, O gentle Reader! you would find A tale in every thing. What more I have to say is short, And you must kindly take it: It is no tale; but, should you think, Perhaps a tale you'll make it. One summer-day I chanced to see This old Man doing all he could To unearth the root of an old tree, A stump of rotten wood. The mattock tottered in his hand; So vain was his endeavour, That at the root of the old tree He might have worked for ever. "You're overtasked, good Simon Lee, Give me your tool," to him I said; And at the word right gladly he Received my proffered aid. I struck, and with a single blow The tangled root I severed, At which the poor old Man so long And vainly had endeavoured. The tears into his eyes were brought, And thanks and praises seemed to run So fast out of his heart, I thought They never would have done. —I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning.

Simonides, whose bitterness yoked art to memory stayed unimpressed with host and god alike. Suppose the dropped crust had occurred at your table, the tremor floored your rowdy hall of praise. Loss provokes economy: sound to scale, word to fee. Ghosts learn death from threnody.

The mouth of the cavern is cut along the top like snowy peaks in cartoons—it zigzags. I sweat onto my violet shirt in the shape of a heart, lock that away behind varnish, a hidden floor between stalactites (long trick knives) A lady of Falconbridge & lady of Dorset torn back through the center & made quiet A paper cut black branch set on a red field. A horse draws the carriage past a lake of blue & all the kids are laid down in the forest to live tilt their heads back, Don’t think of stopping your shooting, more drinking! These are to be among the permanent (wrong) colors Ice rats in stairwells, above us centaurs smack their heads into light bulbs. They get excited over massacre Who were once the innocents who never hoped to live out unspoken prayer. A country that laid so dark so long Pyramids send word to the painted mountains don’t try to lie down as it gets late. stay on guard study your drums & then tighten, pound back a few shots more ash on the sea floors Don’t you scrape away too many organs or paint over. Do not temper the spirit. (4-27-07)

Daily, daily scathing roughens the psyche and veils are unhinged. I too was a planet, planed and waterless. Wolf-roved. Our roofs leaked, mischievous sisters locked the Mother General out in the garth where she prayed to the Foundress and the dead and the living looked on, entombed and disapproving. Gray nuns, grave, gave out. There was weeping in every stall. Though the stalls be empty of cattle, we trust. Though our intellects rust, we grow tweedy-brown and opportunistic, feeding off morsels. A cosmos of relics in the crypt and a senior sister led the laity around brilliantly by a twisted adamantine-ringed nose, to see broken finger bones, bloody cloths, brains. Blood so blue and white we redden and hide our film-star faces. Cagey. Margaret crushed by a door. Martha martyred by a window overlooking the park, with swaggering ducks and blinding water. Paddlers. What if you had held a grudge, fondled it, and found that you had fallen in love? He has turned up finally, his jaw like the suspension bridge, magnetized with stubble, cheekbones like girders. Oh no, I am not a cliché. See my inside. Ten years inside but without the comforts of bantam mornings. Bodies on beds shimmied into corners with shifty valances. September blues. Fat satin. Sidling in from the green room. In the gut, a vagabond ache like disgust. I walk cumbersome honesty sideways through several doors, park her in the smoky alley. Pull up compunction by his Jaeger collar, kiss his spandrel nose, expel him into the snowy street. I relish jealousy on the side with copious dressing. Feed depression to a gull called Guillaume on a bleak beach during lunch break. Simplify the universe with a pie chart and chomp down three-quarters of it with mustard and beer.

They were driving into the mountains, suddenly married, sometimes touching each other’s cheek with a fingernail gingerly: the radio played ecstatic static: certain roads marked with blue enamel numbers led to cloud banks, or basalt screes, or dim hotels with padlocked verandas. Sometimes they quarreled, sometimes they grew old, the wind was constant in their eyes, it was their own wind, they made it. Small towns flew past, Rodez, Albi, limestone quarries, pear orchards, children racing after hoops, wobbling when their shadows wavered, infants crying for fine rain, old women on stoops darning gray veils—and who were we, watching? Doubles, ghosts, the ones who would tell of the field where they pulled over, bluish tinge of the elms, steepness of the other’s eyes, glowworm hidden in its own glint, how the rain was twilight and now is darkness.

Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers, Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow-dogging sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness, The sound of glory ringing in our ears, Without, our shame, within, our consciences, Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. Yet all these fences and their whole array One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

The woman in the documentary reaches her hands to the fence      touches her child through an opening De mis manos      dolor     When I was a child      my mama drove me to the swap meet on the other side for a white dress & flowered wreath      my first Holy Communion      the mamas nursing on the roadside     selling chicle con sus manos libres      Abuelo once rode in the casket of a trunk      He rose again on our side of the border which crossed Bisabuela’s family      Look from my balcony      the sleeping sister volcanoes shaped like breasts     I’ve thought about leaving      Shoving a duffel bag & laptop into the car     taking the dog      But these babies I’ve wanted since I was a child      That’s what girls do where I grew up down the road from a landfill in the humid stench of a beef plant & sugar beets     hulled & boiled for their sweet white meat      I found an animal in a trap who’d fought her way through high grasses wasting to carcass in my own backyard & I believe you know what a merciful act means I don’t know the words for the shame I’ve carried The woman in the documentary needs papers to get back to her children     They’d found her in the hospital      without insurance      la migra Mama nursed women who’d run through asparagus fields’ crackling heat      bellies full against the barbed wire they’re still burying like umbilicals      roots on a battlefield if the child’s a boy or the place where tortillas are made for a girl      Don’t you dare say desert The heat is unbearable & I’ve seen them pulling anchors from legs cursing bullet shells      In the hospital facing pig barns & a graveyard      Mama in her scrubs & gloves pulling newborns      bloodied like suicide wrists      Jars of coins for the ferryman & La Virgen burning an altar on my nightstand      Mis manos      Mis hijos Whatever fence I’ve erected from that salted curse in my family’s blood Release us The woman on the screen whispers a prayer Fly us free as birds Sin vergüenza I admit the darkness I’ve swallowed      the hollow inside      Now      who will unpin our hands      & toward sky      upraise them

Since there is no escape, since at the end My body will be utterly destroyed, This hand I love as I have loved a friend, This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed; Since there is no escape even for me Who love life with a love too sharp to bear: The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea And hours alone too still and sure for prayer— Since darkness waits for me, then all the more Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore In pride, and let me sing with my last breath; In these few hours of light I lift my head; Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead If there is any way to baffle death.

I’ve been writing this since the summer my grandfather taught me how to hold a blade of grass between my thumbs and make it whistle, since I first learned to make green from blue and yellow, turned paper into snowflakes, believed a seashell echoed the sea, and the sea had no end. I’ve been writing this since a sparrow flew into my class and crashed into the window, laid to rest on a bed of tissue in a shoebox by the swings, since the morning I first stood up on the bathroom sink to watch my father shave, since our eyes met in that foggy mirror, since the splinter my mother pulled from my thumb, kissed my blood. I’ve been writing this since the woman I slept with the night of my father’s wake, since my grandmother first called me a faggot and I said nothing, since I forgave her and my body pressed hard against Michael on the dance floor at Twist, since the years spent with a martini and men I knew I couldn’t love. I’ve been writing this since the night I pulled off the road at Big Sur and my eyes caught the insanity of the stars, since the months by the kitchen window watching the snow come down like fallout from a despair I had no word for, since I stopped searching for a name and found myself tick-tock in a hammock asking nothing of the sky. I’ve been writing this since spring, studying the tiny leaves on the oaks dithering like moths, contrast to the eon-old fieldstones unveiled of snow, but forever works-in-progress, since tonight with the battled moon behind the branches spying on the world— same as it ever was—perfectly unfinished, my glasses and pen at rest again on the night table. I’ve been writing this since my eyes started seeing less, my knees aching more, since I began picking up twigs, feathers, and pretty rocks for no reason collecting on the porch where I sit to read and watch the sunset like my grandfather did everyday, remembering him and how to make a blade of grass whistle.

Since so ye please to hear me plain, And that ye do rejoice my smart, Me list no lenger to remain To such as be so overthwart. But cursed be that cruel heart Which hath procur’d a careless mind For me and mine unfeigned smart, And forceth me such faults to find. More than too much I am assured Of thine intent, whereto to trust; A speedless proof I have endured, And now I leave it to them that lust.