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(from Love's Labors Lost ) When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he: “Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he, “Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring-owl, “Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who!”—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, “Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who!”—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose; For in your beauty's orient deep These flowers as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more whither doth stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note. Ask me no more where those stars light That downwards fall in dead of night; For in your eyes they sit, and there, Fixed become as in their sphere. Ask me no more if east or west The phoenix builds her spicy nest; For unto you at last she flies, And in your fragrant bosom dies.

(from Twelfth Night ) When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came to man’s estate, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, ’Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came, alas! to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day. But when I came unto my beds, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, With toss-pots still had drunken heads, For the rain it raineth every day. A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But that’s all one, our play is done, And we’ll strive to please you every day.

(from The Tempest ) Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

(from Two Gentlemen of Verona ) Who is Silvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admirèd be. Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there. Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing Upon the dull earth dwelling; To her let us garlands bring

I Why should a foolish marriage vow, Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each other now, When passion is decayed? We loved, and we loved, as long as we could, Till our love was loved out in us both; But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled: ’Twas pleasure first made it an oath. II If I have pleasures for a friend, And further love in store, What wrong has he, whose joys did end, And who could give no more? ’Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me, Or that I should bar him of another: For all we can gain, is to give ourselves pain, When neither can hinder the other.

Why so pale and wan fond lover? Prithee why so pale? Will, when looking well can’t move her, Looking ill prevail? Prithee why so pale? Why so dull and mute young sinner? Prithee why so mute? Will, when speaking well can’t win her, Saying nothing do’t? Prithee why so mute? Quit, quit for shame, this will not move, This cannot take her; If of herself she will not love, Nothing can make her; The devil take her.

Wintah, summah, snow er shine, Hit's all de same to me, Ef only I kin call you mine, An' keep you by my knee. Ha'dship, frolic, grief er caih, Content by night an' day, Ef only I kin see you whaih You wait beside de way. Livin', dyin', smiles er teahs, My soul will still be free, Ef only thoo de comin' yeahs You walk de worl' wid me. Bird-song, breeze-wail, chune er moan, What puny t'ings dey'll be, Ef w'en I's seemin' all erlone, I knows yo' hea't's wid me.

It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky, like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear. And there, not the promised land, but barbwire and barbwire with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens to search for red fruit clutched to saguaros, the ones at dusk I threw rocks at for the sake of slashing hunger. But I never find them here. These bats say speak English only. Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup clings to my throat, and it’s a tender seed toward my survival: I also scraped needles first, then carved those tall torsos for water, then spotlights drove me and thirty others dashing into palos verdes, green-striped trucks surrounded us, our empty bottles rattled and our breath spoke with rust. When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.

I fed my father what as it turned out the future would call his last meal (tho at the time neither he nor I was required to think it that exactly)— ground chourico & chopped green pepper open-faced on a burger bun, french fries, a cupcake with icing almost chocolate in flavor—alarming, a departure from his diet of low-sodium, zeroed-out trans fats & sugar-free vegetables with high fiber- scores, suffering as he had been for years from barbarian cholesterol & geriatric diabetes (the nurse shrugged simply & said "why not?"— meaning of course that we should get it, all of us, he was going to die, and soon). A few loose chitters of ground sausage fell onto his johnnie from the fork I lifted to his mouth—they left tiny, paprika-red dots of oil on the sheer cotton, prussic red, corpuscle red like the small scabs my sister and I had left on his face while helping him shave the day before. A week earlier I had visited him at home; the day an unusually warm day in a March unusually cold. He was telling me how he'd gone out into the yard to get some sun only to return minutes later to the house, the wind far too strong— he said he worried that if the wind took his hat from his head, he might die while chasing it. I made a joke—forced to, I thought—chasing a hat, I said, that might be a better death than most, I said maybe the death certificate would read "killed by the wind." He laughed all right. You know, he said, you've really got a lousy sense of humor. Better than nothing, I guess—(did he say that, or did I think it?). Later he said . . . he'd said earlier . . . then I said . . . he said . . . I said . . . I said . . . I said . . . Say now that this might be all that's left for consolation, this might be love at the end, the confidences exchanged— all these pratfalls, & this skin chapped by a blade, and your willing servant's shaky hands, then a short trip to be washed a last, finally blameless time (so the scriptures say) in the blood of the lamb: a smell like the smell of sweetgrass burning crosswise the length of a dry plain and sent by a wind whose swiftness has in it the bright voices of kindergarteners, children born of a hardship town.