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I The clearest eyes in all the world they read With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed, As they the light of ages quick and dead, Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew Can slay not one of all the works we knew, Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head. The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought, And moulded of unconquerable thought, And quickened with imperishable flame, Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame, Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name. II Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom Time is not lord, but servant? What least part Of all the fire that fed his living heart, Of all the light more keen that sundawn's bloom That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou art, A shadow born of terror's barren womb, That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou, To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow, That power on him is given thee,—that thy breath Can make him less than love acclaims him now, And hears all time sound back the word it saith? What part hast thou then in his glory, Death? III A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve: Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand, Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve. A graceless guerdon we that loved receive For all our love, from that the dearest land Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland, Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave, Shone on our dreams and memories evermore The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black Seems now the face we loved as he of yore. We have given thee love—no stint, no stay, no lack: What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back? IV But he—to him, who knows what gift is thine, Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we Pass likewise thither where to-night is he, Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine And darken round such dreams as half divine Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee, To read with him the secret of thy shrine. There too, as here, may song, delight, and love, The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove, Fulfil with joy the splendour of the sky Till all beneath wax bright as all above: But none of all that search the heavens, and try The sun, may match the sovereign eagle's eye. V Among the wondrous ways of men and time He went as one that ever found and sought And bore in hand the lamp-like spirit of thought To illume with instance of its fire sublime The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime. No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought, No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime, No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light, No love more lovely than the snows are white, No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb, No song-bird singing from some live soul's height, But he might hear, interpret, or illume With sense invasive as the dawn of doom. VI What secret thing of splendour or of shade Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein Man, led of love and life and death and sin, Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid, Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade Of that full soul that had for aim to win Light, silent over time's dark toil and din, Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade? O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee That he might know not of in spirit, and see The heart within the heart that seems to strive, The life within the life that seems to be, And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive, The living sound of all men's souls alive? VII He held no dream worth waking: so he said, He who stands now on death's triumphal steep, Awakened out of life wherein we sleep And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead. But never death for him was dark or dread: "Look forth" he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep, All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep Vain memory's vision of a vanished head As all that lives of all that once was he Save that which lightens from his word: but we, Who, seeing the sunset-coloured waters roll, Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea, Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole, And life and death but shadows of the soul.

Don't look at me for answers. Who am I but a sobriquet, a teeth-grinder, grinder of color, and vanishing point? There was a time of middle distance, unforgettable, a sort of lace-cut flame-green filament to ravish my skin-tight eyes. I take that back— it was forgettable but not entirely if you consider my heavenly bodies . . . I loved them so. Heaven's motes sift to salt-white—paint is ground to silence; and I, I am bound, unquiet, a shade of blue in the studio. If it isn't too late let me waste one day away from my history. Let me see without looking inside at broken glass.

Sleep, love sleep, The night winds sigh, In soft lullaby. The Lark is at rest With the dew on her breast. So close those dear eyes, That borrowed their hue From the heavens so blue, Sleep, love sleep. Sleep, love sleep, The pale moon looks down On the valleys around, The Glow Moth is flying, The South wind is sighing, And I am low lying, With lute deftly strung, To pour out my song, Sleep, love sleep.

It wasn't our battalion, but we lay alongside it, So the story is as true as the telling is frank. They hadn't one Line-officer left, after Arras, Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank. 'B' Company Commander was fresh from the Depot, An expert on gas drill, otherwise a dud; So Sergeant-Major Money carried on, as instructed, And that's where the swaddies began to sweat blood. His Old Army humour was so well-spiced and hearty That one poor sod shot himself, and one lost his wits; But discipline's maintained, and back in rest-billets The Colonel congratulates 'B' Company on their kits. The subalterns went easy, as was only natural With a terror like Money driving the machine, Till finally two Welshmen, butties from the Rhondda, Bayoneted their bugbear in a field-canteen. Well, we couldn't blame the officers, they relied on Money; We couldn't blame the pitboys, their courage was grand; Or, least of all, blame Money, an old stiff surviving In a New (bloody) Army he couldn't understand.

Such pejorative deformities of sound Without meaningful speech or musical equipoise, Annoyances none but

For all the mysteries, engines, instruments, wherewith the world is filled, which we are able to frame and use to thy glory. For all the trades, variety of operations, cities, temples, streets, bridges, mariner's compass, admirable picture, sculpture, writing, printing, songs and music; wherewith the world is beautified and adorned. Much more for the regent life, And power of perception, Which rules within. That secret depth of fathomless consideration That receives the information Of all our senses, That makes our centre equal to the heavens, And comprehendeth in itself the magnitude of the world; The involv’d mysteries Of our common sense; The inaccessible secret Of perceptive fancy; The repository and treasury Of things that are past; The presentation of things to come; Thy name be glorified For evermore. O miracle Of divine goodness! O fire! O flame of zeal, and love, and joy! Ev’n for our earthly bodies, hast thou created all things. { visible All things { material { sensible Animals, Vegetables, Minerals, Bodies celestial, Bodies terrestrial, The four elements, Volatile spirits, Trees, herbs, and flowers, The influences of heaven, Clouds, vapors, wind, Dew, rain, hail and snow, Light and darkness, night and day, The seasons of the year. Springs, rivers, fountains, oceans, Gold, silver, and precious stones. Corn, wine, and oil, The sun, moon, and stars, Cities, nations, kingdoms. And the bodies of men, the greatest treasures of all, For each other. What then, O Lord, hast thou intended for our Souls, who givest to our bodies such glorious things!

“The fact that we are black is our ultimate reality.” —Ron Karenga And several strengths from drowsiness campaigned but spoke in Single Sermon on the warpland. And went about the warpland saying No. “My people, black and black, revile the River. Say that the River turns, and turn the River. Say that our Something in doublepod contains seeds for the coming hell and health together. Prepare to meet (sisters, brothers) the brash and terrible weather; the pains; the bruising; the collapse of bestials, idols. But then oh then!—the stuffing of the hulls! the seasoning of the perilously sweet! the health! The heralding of the clear obscure! Build now your Church, my brothers, sisters. Build never with brick or Corten nor with granite. Build with lithe love. With love like lion-eyes. with love like morningrise. with love like black, our black— luminously indiscreet; complete; continuous.”

Charles Olson wrote, "You can work on the life, or you can work on the work; you can't do both." How can we separate the two? Why would we want to? Denise Newman Elsewhere as internal. A journal a journey. Not geographical, conquering or colonizing. One is always outside. Even this is a distance. The enclosure is temporary, temporal, a noticing. A space interior, represented by room or book.Diurnal — a journal. Small volume containing the services for the little, or day, hours. An exquisite butterfly, as distinguished from a moth. Day after day extinguished and preserved. Distance measured in days, ending in death, or when the book is full. Her notebooks. I want to tell you about this. (You?) To listen secretly to what is said. "The men's tongues are jewels.” The women's ears are jewels. Her husband is described in sovereign terms. Her primary role is hostess. Going out into the world is a matter what is the matter of ominous glimpses No indicators, distinctions of time, in this over and over. The antistrophe is the catastrophe. Route in day. In a given day, whatever is done. From one place to another, whether distant or near. A passage through life, a passage written, epic remains in a room, the female tribe questing. The self-reflections, abruptions, eruptions, the thinking going only so far as it will, ending in midair — or much further than it needs to Travel, because it reveals? Ravels?Ravel itself ambiguous, to ravel and unravel the same and sharing opposite meanings — "to let fall into a tangled mass; to separate or undo the texture of." Tangled and separate. "Hence to entangle, make intricate, involve; Hence to disentangle, make plain." Traveling one sees connection and mystery. One sees? Sightings/sitings. As though there's a hope one could situate, identify, locate. Claim. The first to sight land. If you see it, it is yours. Her slides and the scribbled notes on her typed accompaniment — which accompanied which? (The notion of forefronting she attempts to subvert.) Small chapters, various and repetitive (cumulative, cyclical, consequential, or in-). Typography gives way. The "central" fiction is perhaps hers, yet is continually disrupted. (This word whose connotations I don’t entirely or exclusively intend or negate.) The intimate distance of telephoto lens — The attempt at both. Objectivity without imposing pattern. She "eavesdropping" (a hearing and house word) on her neighbors. Slides of a wounded man, windowed woman. They were without narrative, yet we imposed narrative. We couldn't stay distanced or objective watching — was this a failure — wanting to see what would happen. The new earrings (which otherwise seem an anomaly, not connecting as the other slides connect private with public) — But what more intimate than the jeweled ear, what more public — The point of connection— We hear. The ornamented ear. Up close, a whisper. A construct more complex and inclusive. "Evidence," noticings, of equal value. There is a large painting behind her projector, someone else's artwork — it mirrors the images in her slides — a scarred man, the musical staves of telephone lines traversing empty skies, a house with a vacant window (the woman has left to answer the phone, hoping it is the man, that he is safe). When this painting is pointed out (I point it out) she says, "That's the way life is." The repetitions — not even realizing they’re the same revelations. Accretions and accumulations, if one learns at all it is “eventually.” Journal entries as openings. Misspelling: “entires.” Begin to read The New York Times again — thus the world enters. I did start reading the paper. Manic, middle of the night, on chemo. Moon face, legs that would no longer hold me, fingers that could not cut or turn or grasp. I read. Obsessed with news of a world I was not in. My doctor said, "Give it an hour a day. Limit it." But the prednesone hallucination in my brain, every time I closed my eyes, looked like an explosion, an atom bomb, repeating, ceaselessly. My atoms. I read about Chernobyl. I ate the words. The poisoned milk, the vegetables. My skin was scarred, burned from the inside, red on the surface from treatment that charred my cells. Doctors from my hospital flew there, trying to save lives. Half my head was bald, overnight. Toxic, waste. Waist-length hair covered the bald spot for awhile, till it too fell out in handfuls. My face a moon. My hair no halo. My face a plate. White and pasty, red from exertion which was nothing at all, red from staying awake. Red from burning. Red from sweats, leaning forward and watching it rain on the newspapers . . . The short and the long of it. Containing and erasing all history in this present moment. Every sentence could be threaded together, shuffled direct connections. Integration without the abyss? The world's madness and disintegration do not cause madness and disintegration The blurring disregard of boundaries The water which falls in drops from the eaves of a house. To stand under the eaves, as to listen and learn what is said within doors: "It is beautiful and we are just beginning to recover from it."

If it were not for England, who would bear This heavy servitude one moment more? To keep a brothel, sweep and wash the floor Of filthiest hovels were noble to compare With this brass-cleaning life. Now here, now there Harried in foolishness, scanned curiously o'er By fools made brazen by conceit, and store Of antique witticisms thin and bare. Only the love of comrades sweetens all, Whose laughing spirit will not be outdone. As night-watching men wait for the sun To hearten them, so wait I on such boys As neither brass nor Hell-fire may appal, Nor guns, nor sergeant-major's bluster and noise.

I saw my soul at rest upon a day As a bird sleeping in the nest of night, Among soft leaves that give the starlight way To touch its wings but not its eyes with light; So that it knew as one in visions may, And knew not as men waking, of delight. This was the measure of my soul's delight; It had no power of joy to fly by day, Nor part in the large lordship of the light; But in a secret moon-beholden way Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night, And all the love and life that sleepers may. But such life's triumph as men waking may It might not have to feed its faint delight Between the stars by night and sun by day, Shut up with green leaves and a little light; Because its way was as a lost star's way, A world's not wholly known of day or night. All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night Made it all music that such minstrels may, And all they had they gave it of delight; But in the full face of the fire of day What place shall be for any starry light, What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way? Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way, Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night, And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day, Nor closer touch conclusive of delight, Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may, Nor more of song than they, nor more of light. For who sleeps once and sees the secret light Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way Between the rise and rest of day and night, Shall care no more to fare as all men may, But be his place of pain or of delight, There shall he dwell, beholding night as day. Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light Before the night be fallen across thy way; Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.