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Either the world is coming together, or else the world is falling apart — here — now — along these letters, against the walls of every heart. Today, tomorrow, within its weather, the end or beginning’s about to start — the world impossibly coming together or very possibly falling apart. Now the lovers’ mouths are open — maybe the miracle’s about to start: the world within us coming together, because all around us it’s falling apart. Even as they speak, he wonders, even as the fear departs: Is that the world coming together? Can they keep it from falling apart? The image, gradually, is growing sharper; now the sound is like a dart: It seemed their world was coming together, but in fact it was falling apart. That’s the nightmare, that’s the terror, that’s the Isaac of this art — which sees that the world might come together if only we’re willing to take it apart. The dream, the lure, is the prayer’s answer, which can’t be plotted on any chart — as we know the world that’s coming together without our knowing is falling apart.

Here’s your mom, here’s your dad. Welcome to being their flesh and blood. Why do you look so sad? Here’s your food, here’s your drink. Also some thoughts, if you care to think. Welcome to everything. Here’s your practically clean slate. Welcome to it, though it’s kind of late. Welcome at any rate. ____ Here’s your paycheck, here’s your rent. Money is nature’s fifth element. Welcome to every cent. Here’s your swarm and your huge beehive. Welcome to the place with its roughly five billion like you alive. Welcome to the phone book that stars your name. Digits are democracy’s secret aim. Welcome to your claim to fame. ____ Here’s your marriage, and here’s divorce. Now that’s the order you can’t reverse. Welcome to it; up yours, Here’s your blade, here’s your wrist. Welcome to playing your own terrorist; call it your Middle East. Here’s your mirror, your dental gleam. Here’s an octopus in your dream. Why do you try to scream? ____ Here’s your corncob, your TV set. Your candidate suffering an upset. Welcome to what he said. Here’s your porch, see the cars pass by. Here’s your shitting dog’s guilty eye. Welcome to its alibi. Here are your cicadas, then a chickadee, the bulb’s dry tear in your lemon tea. Welcome to infinity. ____ Here are your pills on the plastic tray, your disappointing, crisp X-ray. You are welcome to pray. Here’s your cemetery, a well-kept glen. Welcome to a voice that says “Amen.” The end of the rope, old man. Here’s your will, and here’s a few takers. Here’s an empty pew. Here’s life after you. ____ And here are your stars which appear still keen on shining as though you had never been. They might have a point, old bean. Here’s your afterlife, with no trace of you, especially of your face. Welcome, and call it space. Welcome to where one cannot breathe. This way, space resembles what’s underneath, and Saturn holds the wreath.

Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, 'tis best To use myself in jest Thus by feign'd deaths to die. Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today; He hath no desire nor sense, Nor half so short a way: Then fear not me, But believe that I shall make Speedier journeys, since I take More wings and spurs than he. O how feeble is man's power, That if good fortune fall, Cannot add another hour, Nor a lost hour recall! But come bad chance, And we join to'it our strength, And we teach it art and length, Itself o'er us to'advance. When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind, But sigh'st my soul away; When thou weep'st, unkindly kind, My life's blood doth decay. It cannot be That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st, If in thine my life thou waste, That art the best of me. Let not thy divining heart Forethink me any ill; Destiny may take thy part, And may thy fears fulfil; But think that we Are but turn'd aside to sleep; They who one another keep Alive, ne'er parted be.

I That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. II An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. III O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. IV Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

all down on perdido street, from san juan to inglewood, up on that bridge, up where the soul trees grow by soul, dance to fantastic information while we kick off the modern world. the whistle sounded good like a kiss on a train. a track below us in the cabinet in the tunnel under the water. a steady boom to lift us out. nobody lived, not without digging, but he wore that ivory waistcoat and we loved to see that shit. I love my people too much to be around them at school. I slip underneath the cinema tree, move myself in half, dance to fray, write a paper on the salve trade. the big fat women and the heliocopters they bring with them to watch them and their kids. whole long- ass sheets of improper names. we refused to act right at the hospital and I was right with ’em. at the wrong time I started reading my paper and ash flew from their big ol’ legs. we rub down and dance everyday at the broke clinic and I was right with ’em. johnny griffin turns to this long burning to pray for fire. make a song about the sky they stole. if you ain’t gon’ get down then what you come here for? what they bring your ass up in here for if you ain’t gon’ tear shit up? if you wasn’t just as happy to be here as you was to come then what you gon’ do, simple motherfucker? the salve trade

We keep trying to kill it, split it, hack It to itsy bits. We suspend it On the wall where we can see it Passing. We hang it around our necks Or wrists, laying pulse next to Pulse as if each might like Company. Ba-bump, etc. Rising And setting has everything to do With it. In the afternoon we feel so Lazy we try not to close our eyes And jerk awake, wondering what has Passed, and where did we go For that suspended hour, And could anything keep us here.

Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree. The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass, The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls, But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous In the blest Nirvana of eternal light! Go to the good heart that is my husband, Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love: i Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him Wrought out my destiny i that through the flesh I won spirit, and through spirit, peace. There is no marriage in heaven, But there is love.

King Oliver of New Orleans has kicked the bucket, but he left behind old Satchmo with his red-hot horn to syncopate the heart and mind. The honky-tonks in Storyville have turned to ashes, have turned to dust, but old Satchmo is still around like Uncle Sam’s IN GOD WE TRUST. Where, oh, where is Bessie Smith, with her heart as big as the blues of truth? Where, oh, where is Mister Jelly Roll, with his Cadillac and diamond tooth? Where, oh, where is Papa Handy With his blue notes a-dragging from bar to bar? Where, oh where is bulletproof Leadbelly with his tall tales and 12-string guitar? Old Hip Cats, when you sang and played the blues the night Satchmo was born, did you know hypodermic needles in Rome couldn’t hoodoo him away from his horn? Wyatt Earp’s legend, John Henry’s, too, is a dare and a bet to old Satchmo when his groovy blues put headlines in the news from the Gold Coast to cold Moscow. Old Satchmo’s gravelly voice and tapping foot and crazy notes set my soul on fire. If I climbed the seventy-seven steps of the Seventh Heaven, Satchmo’s high C would carry me higher! Are you hip to this, Harlem? Are you hip? On Judgment Day, Gabriel will say after he blows his horn: “I’d be the greatest trumpeter in the Universe if old Satchmo had never been born!”

(For George Reston Malloch) There’s teuch sauchs growin’ i’ the Reuch Heuch Hauch. Like the sauls o’ the damned are they, And ilk ane yoked in a whirligig Is birlin’ the lee-lang day. O we come doon frae oor stormiest moods, And Licht like a bird i’ the haun’, But the teuch sauchs there i’ the Reuch Heuch Hauch As the deil’s ain hert are thrawn. The winds ’ud pu’ them up by the roots, Tho’ it broke the warl’ asunder, But they rin richt doon thro’ the boddom o’ Hell, And nane kens hoo fer under! There’s no’ a licht that the Heavens let loose Can calm them a hanlawhile, Nor frae their ancient amplefeyst Sall God’s ain sel’ them wile.

I live a small life, barely bigger than a speck, barely more than a blip on the radar sweep though it is not nothing, as the garter snake climbs the rock rose shrub and the squirrel creeps on bramble thorns. Not nothing to the crows who heckle from the crowns of the last light’s trees winterstripped of green, except for the boles that ivy winds each hour round. See, the world is busy and the world is quick, barely time for a spider to suck the juice from a hawk moth’s head so it can use the moth as a spindle that it wraps in fiber while the moth constricts until it’s thin as a stick you might think was nothing, a random bit caught in a web coming loose from the window frame, in wind.