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After Thomas Hardy The milkmaids say Pray for their speech is reserved, fixed here in circles of opalized light. Presenting themselves without fancy or choice chapped hands on the full udder’s verge, y’know — cream-skinned, gathering toad spume on skirts relentlessly cracking the snails underfoot — a century later & more their compeers bow heads to these luminous fields made of ether, of blue & extravagant air, calling up with the same nimble fingers their ciphered familiars, girl-souls at large in a nonhuman hour. Speaking their argot & screen-practiced moue. Not to you, with your paper, your man-heavy shoes, untouched by the mulch of the digital yard! They only gaze rapt at threshold, milk spilled. No purchase for you here,Sir, & no clue —

Here comes the shadow not looking where it is going, And the whole night will fall; it is time. Here comes the little wind which the hour Drags with it everywhere like an empty wagon through leaves. Here comes my ignorance shuffling after them Asking them what they are doing. Standing still, I can hear my footsteps Come up behind me and go on Ahead of me and come up behind me and With different keys clinking in the pockets, And still I do not move. Here comes The white-haired thistle seed stumbling past through the branches Like a paper lantern carried by a blind man. I believe it is the lost wisdom of my grandfather Whose ways were his own and who died before I could ask. Forerunner, I would like to say, silent pilot, Little dry death, future, Your indirections are as strange to me As my own. I know so little that anything You might tell me would be a revelation. Sir, I would like to say, It is hard to think of the good woman Presenting you with children, like cakes, Granting you the eye of her needle, Standing in doorways, flinging after you Little endearments, like rocks, or her silence Like a whole Sunday of bells. Instead, tell me: Which of my many incomprehensions Did you bequeath me, and where did they take you? Standing In the shoes of indecision, I hear them Come up behind me and go on ahead of me Wearing boots, on crutches, barefoot, they could never Get together on any door-sill or destination— The one with the assortment of smiles, the one Jailed in himself like a forest, the one who comes Back at evening drunk with despair and turns Into the wrong night as though he owned it—oh small Deaf disappearance in the dusk, in which of their shoes Will I find myself tomorrow?

(after Saba) Anyone watching you in the water would think: ‘A siren!’ Winner in the women’s swimming event, you seem strange on the screen of my inglorious life. While you smile in triumph I tie a thread, a thin unbreakable thing, to your toe but you stride past without noticing me. Your friends, young like yourself, crowd round and make a noise in the bar; and then just for a moment cloud-shadow, a grave motherly shadow shivers down from your eyebrows to the proud, beautiful chin and joins your rising to my own setting sun.

she wasn’t born in this city. she found its basalt greenstone chunks, seafloor forced skyward. it found her hands through mist and odors whirring pigeons’ clubfeet fluttering, toothless men’s paper sacks spilling elixirs, roots, shark fin tonics. heat swelling sewer steam rising, side street chess match maneuvers mystifying. it sought her whirlwind hair, grown seavine thick. songbird, adrift, nestling neon, she crafted snares for moths, butterflies, treasure hunting children tracing ideographs: sky, sun. patina spires, smirking dragon boys humming silk lanterns, flight of phoenixes through fish vendors’ stalls, corrugated plastic blackbird perches, jade-ringed gardens, needle-tipped shanties. it bulleted trees, lighting hash pipes; herbalists’ storefront canopies concealing leathered men, versed in languages of whiskered ghosts. it invented her dialect carving tongue: salt fables, yellow caution tape palaces. she lost herself in this city. it lured her, drank her air; honey voice’s precision, hybrid beyond memory. songbird, adrift, this city’s misplaced siren. migration patterns subterranean streams swallowed whole.

This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls the song nobody knows because anyone who has heard it is dead, and the others can't remember. Shall I tell you the secret and if I do, will you get me out of this bird suit? I don't enjoy it here squatting on this island looking picturesque and mythical with these two feathery maniacs, I don't enjoy singing this trio, fatal and valuable. I will tell the secret to you, to you, only to you. Come closer. This song is a cry for help: Help me! Only you, only you can, you are unique at last. Alas it is a boring song but it works every time.

The puppy must be learned of all this material. No map of the hospital. First, the war effort. Then, the war itself. The water makes and remakes its walls. No persons or boats are allowed in them. This plot is to be played out in the buildings known to us. Swim for the stick, baby! You’ve got an anti-sink device. The nba guard flips forward and back in his hologram. Fish-fission. Light. —and found wheels beneath her linen skirt. The kids mill around like businessmen-clowns. Their organization is a matter of choice and thus not protected under reedlight. Candlelight. Horizonto-rotary gaze beating clearly to the right. Now, corrected, to the left. Fish! Flip! and Out of Hearing! Alone in the pink apartment with your little swab. The moth-mom tries out everything at once: straps on wool, ties a candle to her head. Don’t pity her. She wants to eat the moth! Which dithers over whether it eats wool or flame. The skyline lifts, and the gulfstream slips out barefoot clear to England. Maidens rhinocently down the cowpath clomp. Toothbrush into yogurt cup,Recyclamente! I am so adamant. The siren with a catch in its cry starts over. Eternal transistance. Ent’ring our marriage ride.

My transgressions pile against the garden wall (built when Rome began to weaken, scarred by a cannonball.) I gossiped; I snubbed a dinner guest. I watch until the wall writhes with awful feral cats fed by shrunken widows and the odd librarian. I’ve begun to be depleted by your absence; one of  love’s worst symptoms. For years, I’d had the sense to hold myself apart. I’ve been here long enough to kill two mint plants and a lavender, then resurrect their better part. I’d like to let you die on the vine. Not you, the You I Dream, who follows through on waking. See how the watcher sees the storm but doesn’t get wet. Be that. Be what? Be wiser than the heart.

So we told him to tell those dudes to meet at the park, on a Friday night, 7 o’clock, and they would get the surprise of their lives. I was working a shift at the grocery store, the stiff apron covered in flour and scarred with dirt, wet from the spray nozzle a crooked crane in my hand. One of us had borrowed an enormous Cadillac. Racially inclusive casting to some, hiring kids from the neighborhood to us. What I remember was how much I wanted to go. It wasn’t so much that we were going to beat the shit out of fake roughnecks from the burbs who had no clue what they had coming. It was because I wanted to be one of the ants in a swarm. All my life I hid in the library reading about Greek heroes smiting their enemies. My best friend in the bunch was trying to convince me to skip out of work, even if it meant getting fired. I owed this minimum wage job nothing. My paychecks mostly went to my mom anyways. This was the critical moment in the hero’s journey and you’re going to miss it, he told me, though for sure he did not use those words. Of course I did not go — not because of cowardice, but for the much more boring reason that it did not seem proper for me to break the promise I made when I took this shitty job, to be there when I said I would, to clean what I would clean, break down what I would break down. They drove to that park as the dusk broke like a bloody egg over the nearby lake, blasting Ice Cube the entire way, his song disparaging Koreans seemingly not bothering the one Korean in the crew, and the suburban boys never even showed up. I am guessing they just smoked a bit and shouted over the too loud music and fit back into the warehouse of a car that could carry their stupid boy bodies over the roads, a Cadillac become Pegasus, none of our dreams having wings.

Ad libitum I sing this body ad libitum, Europe scraped raw between my teeth until,presto, “Ave Maria” floats to the surface from a Tituba 
tributary of “Swanee.” Until I’m a legato darkling whole note, my voice shimmering up from the Atlantic’s hold; until I’m a coda of sail song whipped in salted wind; until my chorus swells like a lynched tongue; until the nocturnes boiling beneath the roof of my mouth extinguish each burning cross. I sing this life in testimony to tempo rubato, to time stolen body by body by body by body from one passage to another; I sing tremolo to the opus of loss. I sing this story staccato and stretto, a fugue of blackface and blued-up arias. 
I sing with one hand smoldering in the steely canon, the other lento, slow, languorous: lingered in the fields of “Babylon’s Falling” ...

"Why did you melt your waxen man Sister Helen? To-day is the third since you began." "The time was long, yet the time ran, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!) "But if you have done your work aright, Sister Helen, You'll let me play, for you said I might." "Be very still in your play to-night, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven!) "You said it must melt ere vesper-bell, Sister Helen; If now it be molten, all is well." "Even so,—nay, peace! you cannot tell, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?) "Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day, Sister Helen; How like dead folk he has dropp'd away!" "Nay now, of the dead what can you say, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?) "See, see, the sunken pile of wood, Sister Helen, Shines through the thinn'd wax red as blood!" "Nay now, when look'd you yet on blood, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!) "Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore, Sister Helen, And I'll play without the gallery door." "Aye, let me rest,—I'll lie on the floor, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?) "Here high up in the balcony, Sister Helen, The moon flies face to face with me." "Aye, look and say whatever you see, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?) "Outside it's merry in the wind's wake, Sister Helen; In the shaken trees the chill stars shake." "Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?) "I hear a horse-tread, and I see, Sister Helen, Three horsemen that ride terribly." "Little brother, whence come the three, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven?) "They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar, Sister Helen, And one draws nigh, but two are afar." "Look, look, do you know them who they are, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?) "Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast, Sister Helen, For I know the white mane on the blast." "The hour has come, has come at last, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!) "He has made a sign and called Halloo! Sister Helen, And he says that he would speak with you." "Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?) "The wind is loud, but I hear him cry, Sister Helen, That Keith of Ewern's like to die." "And he and thou, and thou and I, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!) "Three days ago, on his marriage-morn, Sister Helen, He sicken'd, and lies since then forlorn." "For bridegroom's side is the bride a thorn, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Cold bridal cheer, between Hell and Heaven!) "Three days and nights he has lain abed, Sister Helen, And he prays in torment to be dead." "The thing may chance, if he have pray'd, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, If he have pray'd, between Hell and Heaven!) "But he has not ceas'd to cry to-day, Sister Helen, That you should take your curse away." " My prayer was heard,—he need but pray, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?) "But he says, till you take back your ban, Sister Helen, His soul would pass, yet never can." "Nay then, shall I slay a living man, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!) "But he calls for ever on your name, Sister Helen, And says that he melts before a flame." "My heart for his pleasure far'd the same, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!) "Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast, Sister Helen, For I know the white plume on the blast." "The hour, the sweet hour I forecast, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?) "He stops to speak, and he stills his horse, Sister Helen; But his words are drown'd in the wind's course." "Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What word now heard, between Hell and Heaven?) "Oh he says that Keith of Ewern's cry, Sister Helen, Is ever to see you ere he die." "In all that his soul sees, there am I Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, The soul's one sight, between Hell and Heaven!) "He sends a ring and a broken coin, Sister Helen, And bids you mind the banks of Boyne." "What else he broke will he ever join, Little brother?" (O Mother, Mary Mother, No, never join'd, between Hell and Heaven!) "He yields you these and craves full fain, Sister Helen, You pardon him in his mortal pain." "What else he took will he give again, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven!) "He calls your name in an agony, Sister Helen, That even dead Love must weep to see." "Hate, born of Love, is blind as he, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Love turn'd to hate, between Hell and Heaven!) "Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast, Sister Helen, For I know the white hair on the blast." "The short short hour will soon be past, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!) "He looks at me and he tries to speak, Sister Helen, But oh! his voice is sad and weak!" "What here should the mighty Baron seek, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?) "Oh his son still cries, if you forgive, Sister Helen, The body dies but the soul shall live." "Fire shall forgive me as I forgive, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!) "Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive, Sister Helen, To save his dear son's soul alive." "Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!) "He cries to you, kneeling in the road, Sister Helen, To go with him for the love of God!" "The way is long to his son's abode, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!) "A lady's here, by a dark steed brought, Sister Helen, So darkly clad, I saw her not." "See her now or never see aught, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What more to see, between Hell and Heaven?) "Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair, Sister Helen, On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair." "Blest hour of my power and her despair, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Hour blest and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven!) "Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow, Sister Helen, 'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago." "One morn for pride and three days for woe, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!) "Her clasp'd hands stretch from her bending head, Sister Helen; With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed." "What wedding-strains hath her bridal-bed, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven?) "She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon, Sister Helen,— She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon." "Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!) "They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow, Sister Helen, And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow." "Let it turn whiter than winter snow, Little brother!" (O Mother, Mary Mother, Woe-wither'd gold, between Hell and Heaven!) "O Sister Helen, you heard the bell, Sister Helen! More loud than the vesper-chime it fell." "No vesper-chime, but a dying knell, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!) "Alas! but I fear the heavy sound, Sister Helen; Is it in the sky or in the ground?" "Say, have they turn'd their horses round, Little brother?" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?) "They have rais'd the old man from his knee, Sister Helen, And they ride in silence hastily." "More fast the naked soul doth flee, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!) "Flank to flank are the three steeds gone, Sister Helen, But the lady's dark steed goes alone." "And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown, Little brother." ( O Mother, Mary Mother, The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!) "Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill, Sister Helen, And weary sad they look by the hill." "But he and I are sadder still, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!) "See, see, the wax has dropp'd from its place, Sister Helen, And the flames are winning up apace!" "Yet here they burn but for a space, Little brother! " ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!) "Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd, Sister Helen? Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?" "A soul that's lost as mine is lost, Little brother!" ( O Mother, Mary Mother, Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)