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LOQUITUR:En Betrans de Born. Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer-up of strife. Eccovi! Judge ye! Have I dug him up again? The scene is his castle, Altaforte. “Papiols” is his jongleur. “The Leopard,” the device of Richard (Cœur de Lion). I Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace. You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let’s to music! I have no life save when the swords clash. But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson, Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing. II In hot summer have I great rejoicing When the tempests kill the earth’s foul peace, And the light’nings from black heav’n flash crimson, And the fierce thunders roar me their music And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing, And through all the riven skies God’s swords clash. III Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash! And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing, Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing! Better one hour’s stour than a year’s peace With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music! Bah! there’s no wine like the blood’s crimson! IV And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson. And I watch his spears through the dark clash And it fills all my heart with rejoicing And prys wide my mouth with fast music When I see him so scorn and defy peace, His lone might ’gainst all darkness opposing. V The man who fears war and squats opposing My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson But is fit only to rot in womanish peace Far from where worth’s won and the swords clash For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing; Yea, I fill all the air with my music. VI Papiols, Papiols, to the music! There’s no sound like to swords swords opposing, No cry like the battle’s rejoicing When our elbows and swords drip the crimson And our charges ’gainst “The Leopard’s” rush clash. May God damn for ever all who cry “Peace!” VII And let the music of the swords make them crimson Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash! Hell blot black for always the thought “Peace”!

The name of his native country pronounced on a distant shore could not please the ears of a traveller more than hearing the words “nitrogen,” “oxidation of iron” and “hygrometer.” —Alexander von Humboldt, nineteenth-century scientist-explorer When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire, one longs to hear the cry “Hygrometer! Fresh hygrometer for sale!” Yes, and when the fair sex sidles close and coyly murmurs “nitrogen” into a burly masculine ear, I guarantee you: the translation is very easy. The allurements of a local siren, whispering the kind of patois a traveler like Lord Byron favors, never fail to comfort, and to reassure, evoking pleasant memories of one’s own beloved hygrometer at home, kept fresh in Cosmoline and camphor and awaiting one’s rearrival back in his native xenon and nitrogen. Without these occasional reminiscences, any translation from nation to nation, tongue to tongue, becomes a translation difficult to sustain. I think of my grandmother: “We're not hirin’ today” “Go away” “Dumb Jew”— her share of the language that greeted her here in the land of alien hygrometer and freedom, where she was only one more funny-skirted for- eigner yearning to hear a lulling Hungarian nitrogen hum her to sleep. Eventually, of course, the American nitrogen sufficed. Her daughter could speak, in free translation, both uranium and argon; and her granddaughter gigs with Fire ’n Ice, a skinhead punk-grunge group that performs in sheer black nighties and clown wigs—she plays mean electric hygrometer in the first set and then, for a twofer, ( very American, that) plays paper-and-comb. Far out. She’s so fluent in various World Wide Webbery that nitrogen in a thousand different inflections is her birthright, and almost any translation, mind to mind, gender to gender, is second nature. “I earn my keep, I party, I sleep” is her motto. Though she’s for- tunate in having a lover who’s CEO at Hygrometer, Potassium, Klein & Wong: it helps to pay the “hygrometer man” when he knocks at the door. I won’t say that they fear this guy exactly, but he’s a major badass nitrogen- sucking cyberwired ninja-kicking shitheel (or, translation: call him Sir). It makes one pine for a land where the birds all choir in sweetly trilling melodies on a flower-scented shore, and a translation sings all night. Row gen- tly toward it. The tender forests sigh, and the soft whirr of the hygrometer promises oxidation of iron.

Your hands have no more worth than tree stumps at harvest. Don’t sit on my porch while I make myself useful. Braid secrets in scalps on summer days for my sisters. Secure every strand of gossip with tight rubber bands of value. What possessed you to ever grow your nails so long? How can you have history without braids? A black girl is happiest when rooted to the scalp are braids. She dances with them whipping down her back like corn in winds of harvest. Braiding forces our reunions to be like the shifts your mothers work, long. I find that being surrounded by only your own is more useful. Gives our mixed blood more value. Solidifies your place with your race, with your sisters. Your block is a layered cake of your sisters. Force your lips quiet and sweet and they’ll speak when they need to practice braids. Your hair length is the only part of you that holds value. The tallest crop is worshipped at harvest. So many little hands in your head. You are finally useful. Your hair is yours, your hair is theirs, your hair is, for a black girl, long. Tender-headed ass won’t last ’round here long. Cut your nails and use your fists to protect yourself against your sisters. Somehow mold those hands useful. You hair won’t get pulled in fights if they are in braids. Beat out the weak parts of the crops during harvest. When they are limp and without soul they have value. If you won’t braid or defend yourself what is your value? Sitting on the porch until dark sweeps in needing to be invited, you’ll be needing long. When the crop is already used what is its worth after harvest? You’ll learn that you can’t ever trust those quick to call themselves your sisters. They yearn for the gold that is your braids. You hold on your shoulders a coveted item that is useful. Your presence will someday become useful. One day the rest of your body will stagger under the weight of its value. Until then, sit in silence in the front with your scalp on fire from the braids. I promise you won’t need anyone too long. One day you will love yourself on your own, without the validation of sisters. No longer a stump wailing for affection at harvest.

With a nod to Jonah Winter Now we’re all “friends,” there is no love but Like, A semi-demi goddess, something like A reality-TV star look-alike, Named Simile or Me Two. So we like In order to be liked. It isn’t like There’s Love or Hate now. Even plain “dislike” Is frowned on: there’s no button for it. Like Is something you can quantify: each “like” You gather’s almost something money-like, Token of virtual support. “Please like This page to stamp out hunger.” And you’d like To end hunger and climate change alike, But it’s unlikely Like does diddly. Like Just twiddles its unopposing thumbs-ups, like- Wise props up scarecrow silences. “I’m like, So OVER him,” I overhear. “But, like, He doesn’t get it. Like, you know? He’s like It’s all OK. Like I don’t even LIKE Him anymore. Whatever. I’m all like ... ” Take “like” out of our chat, we’d all alike Flounder, agape, gesticulating like A foreign film sans subtitles, fall like Dumb phones to mooted desuetude. Unlike With other crutches, um, when we use “like,” We’re not just buying time on credit: Like Displaces other words; crowds, cuckoo-like, Endangered hatchlings from the nest. (Click “like” If you’re against extinction!) Like is like Invasive zebra mussels, or it’s like Those nutria-things, or kudzu, or belike Redundant fast food franchises, each like (More like) the next. Those poets who dislike Inversions, archaisms, who just like Plain English as she’s spoke — why isn’t “like” Their (literally) every other word? I’d like Us just to admit that’s what real speech is like. But as you like, my friend. Yes, we’re alike, How we pronounce, say, lichen, and dislike Cancer and war. So like this page. Click Like.

To the dim light and the large circle of shade I have clomb, and to the whitening of the hills, There where we see no color in the grass. Natheless my longing loses not its green, It has so taken root in the hard stone Which talks and hears as though it were a lady. Utterly frozen is this youthful lady, Even as the snow that lies within the shade; For she is no more moved than is the stone By the sweet season which makes warm the hills And alters them afresh from white to green Covering their sides again with flowers and grass. When on her hair she sets a crown of grass The thought has no more room for other lady, Because she weaves the yellow with the green So well that Love sits down there in the shade,– Love who has shut me in among low hills Faster than between walls of granite-stone. She is more bright than is a precious stone; The wound she gives may not be healed with grass: I therefore have fled far o’er plains and hills For refuge from so dangerous a lady; But from her sunshine nothing can give shade,– Not any hill, nor wall, nor summer-green. A while ago, I saw her dressed in green,– So fair, she might have wakened in a stone This love which I do feel even for her shade; And therefore, as one woos a graceful lady, I wooed her in a field that was all grass Girdled about with very lofty hills. Yet shall the streams turn back and climb the hills Before Love’s flame in this damp wood and green Burn, as it burns within a youthful lady, For my sake, who would sleep away in stone My life, or feed like beasts upon the grass, Only to see her garments cast a shade. How dark soe’er the hills throw out their shade, Under her summer green the beautiful lady Covers it, like a stone cover’d in grass.

1896 Speakin’ in general, I ’ave tried ’em all— The ’appy roads that take you o’er the world. Speakin’ in general, I ’ave found them good For such as cannot use one bed too long, But must get ’ence, the same as I ’ave done, An’ go observin’ matters till they die. What do it matter where or ’ow we die, So long as we’ve our ’ealth to watch it all— The different ways that different things are done, An’ men an’ women lovin’ in this world; Takin’ our chances as they come along, An’ when they ain’t, pretendin’ they are good? In cash or credit—no, it aren’t no good; You ’ave to ’ave the ’abit or you’d die, Unless you lived your life but one day long, Nor didn’t prophesy nor fret at all, But drew your tucker some’ow from the world, An’ never bothered what you might ha’ done. But, Gawd, what things are they I ’aven’t done? I’ve turned my ’and to most, an’ turned it good, In various situations round the world— For ’im that doth not work must surely die; But that's no reason man should labour all ’Is life on one same shift—life’s none so long. Therefore, from job to job I’ve moved along. Pay couldn’t ’old me when my time was done, For something in my ’ead upset it all, Till I ’ad dropped whatever ’twas for good, An’, out at sea, be’eld the dock-lights die, An’ met my mate—the wind that tramps the world! It’s like a book, I think, this bloomin’ world, Which you can read and care for just so long, But presently you feel that you will die Unless you get the page you’re readin’ done, An’ turn another—likely not so good; But what you’re after is to turn ’em all. Gawd bless this world! Whatever she ’ath done— Excep’ when awful long I’ve found it good. So write, before I die, ‘’E liked it all!’

When I died, the circulating library Which I built up for Spoon River, And managed for the good of inquiring minds, Was sold at auction on the public square, As if to destroy the last vestige Of my memory and influence. For those of you who could not see the virtue Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy" And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline," Were really the power in the village, And often you asked me, "What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?" I am out of your way now, Spoon River, Choose your own good and call it good. For I could never make you see That no one knows what is good Who knows not what is evil; And no one knows what is true Who knows not what is false.

I’ve been sad and can’t find a seasonal sequence. I go forward then my order reverses and it’s winter again two years ago, with that sticky ice that lost your footing as you gripped that container of Greek yogurt you brought to the doctor’s, even when you couldn’t speak; you only darted your eyes with a fear that continually registered in your pupil size. You clutched your sets of things. I am full of what are sets of things I know well then I go backwards and I don’t have any sets of things. I see your pink-stained washcloth from your wool coat. Your cerebellum tumor is inside with your other tumors but I don’t know it’s there yet neither do you. It appeared and controlled your brain and the things you couldn’t hold. I wonder what things really are, if they are just a set of symbols we sequence and then find purposeful. I wonder if they are like rituals that we learn for our brain. We have those for our body and those for our brain. I look at you — you are alive — and you breathe labored breaths then you died. There, in the hospital bed, when I let time lapse not knowing how to hold you. I let you die for seven days. Your daughter, bigger than I am, could hold you. She could use her muscles to grip you, but I couldn’t hold you, even though you lost forty pounds your last month. I couldn’t find the sequence because I reversed everything into its pain cycle and you didn’t want me to watch you die but I couldn’t understand how everyone could let it happen and I could too, but only if I could let it fall into its hole, its awkward sequence, around death; it’s not awkward it’s just not right. I could make as many intuitive decisions, and many logical sequences occurred around your treatments, but I didn’t know you were stepping out of sequence, and treatments are not producing remedies, and I left myself at the side of the hospital bed. You were in another light, exiting slowly. I thought the sequence of grieving would banish all the anxiety but it came back this year. I became debilitated. I have a debilitating anxiety that I thought was gone. 
I have too many anxious sequences now and they are blurring meaning. They are blurring my truths like time-lapses and I don’t rush to find the joy of the occurrence without looking for the traps, and my logic, and my stumbling out into another bed that places me in this now-future and you don’t see me because you are no longer alive with me and I can’t rectify this sequence. And I worry that when I love him he will die too. I can’t happen into its learning like it’s wisdom. It’s still deeply unconscious to hold this fear after I banished worry because I looked it in the eyes and it was real and I felt I knew what it looked like. It’s the unknowing learning that I was deeply afraid to imagine and yet it’s your empty bed, your empty closet, you’re empty of the spirited you that gave you to me, in that human way we come to rely upon and that shames us so. And every night of this thinking is a long night of this thinking. Do you fall into bed with us, and I have no idea of this? I’d love to think it’s so, and we have room for your sets of things.

You’d been gone four months by then, but we brought you along anyway. On my back, you rested riding inside a wooden box. The idea was to lay you gently at the water’s surface, but our clumsy hands spilled you, and it was hard to tell whether you went head or feet first, but it didn’t much matter anyway, I suppose. You would float on down the creek until you had reached the next and so on. My father gave a little wave and joked, “We’ll see you back on down in Denver, Dad.” We stood there in silence listening to you chuckle under the bridge and over the first set of riffles downstream.

It’s all the rage to sport waxed moustaches and cure your own sausages in some mildewy basement that formerly would have hosted convulsively awkward parties with spin the bottle and seven minutes in the dark and terrifying closet (aka heaven) but now boasts soppressata strung on repurposed vintage drying racks and fat clay pots of kombucha and curdling hops. Personally I've never recovered from the sex-shaped void left in those closets by all the groping that should have occurred to me but didn't: right under my nose kids my age were creeping into adulthood one clammy, trembling palm on one breast at a time. There was also the horror of not being chosen in gym. It is conceivable that learning intricately how to butcher an entire hog and render every morsel might give one a feeling of mastery one lacked in childhood. It is the greatest immaturity to believe suffering entitles you to something someone wiser and grayer than I once said. But in those basements and carpools and playgrounds as I assassinated one by one clandestinely my torturers abandoning their foul normal bodies to compost the astonishing tedium of the wending suburban lanes, I was transubstantiating to supernal fame and beauty and such eerie genius that entire books were written about my books. In fact it takes a long time to realize your suffering is of very little consequence to anyone but you. And by that time the future is already happening and you're pickling okra and starfruit and foraging for morels in urban forests and suspending artisan mozzarella in little wet nets and crafting small-batch, nitrite-free data and maybe even thinking about having children, which you swore in a million billion years you would never do.