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(October, 1864) Shoe the steed with silver That bore him to the fray, When he heard the guns at dawning— Miles away; When he heard them calling, calling— Mount! nor stay: Quick, or all is lost; They’ve surprised and stormed the post, They push your routed host— Gallop! retrieve the day! House the horse in ermine— For the foam-flake blew White through the red October; He thundered into view; They cheered him in the looming; Horseman and horse they knew. The turn of the tide began, The rally of bugles ran, He swung his hat in the van; The electric hoof-spark flew. Wreathe the steed and lead him— For the charge he led Touched and turned the cypress Into amaranths for the head Of Philip, king of riders, Who raised them from the dead. The camp (at dawning lost) By eve recovered—forced, Rang with laughter of the host At belated Early fled. Shroud the horse in sable— For the mounds they heap! There is firing in the Valley, And yet no strife they keep; It is the parting volley, It is the pathos deep. There is glory for the brave Who lead, and nobly save, But no knowledge in the grave Where the nameless followers sleep.

I like it quiet like this, Alton. I like to think. I love the way spring light falls easy, soft. This morning I was driving the cruiser, savoring gold pollen everywhere out in the south of the county. Real nice, seeing forsythia and daffodils, ditch irises, and a few Cherokee roses opening white. It was a blue day, and I had a Tampa Jewel, just counting cows, seeing an April breeze in the catkins and new leaves, the radio off. I know that’s hardly right, but curse any citizen who’d grudge me an hour’s peace. Then I started seeing this marksmanship in the caution signs, the yellow diamonds that warn of deer or curves ahead, a steep grade—there’s one of those. Four circles and a jagged hole, likely a thirty-eight slug, smack in the center neater than Willard cleaves meat at the joint. A dozen and more. I got mad because I get paid to protect what the county commission declares holy— the park with its petting zoo, the rebel sentry on the square, and all the highway signs— and here’s all indications that some felon has no respect, some felon who can shoot. I admit my feelings were mixed, that right indignation at the broken law, but envy of his eye for centers. Mind you, I saw nary a rip on the fringes or a near miss. Bull’s-eyes, every sign I saw. A fool is what I feel, you understand, cause I motored over to Pig Burton’s store near The Bottle and asked him—he was stacking feed sacks on Robert Ring’s vehicle— who the hell was the target king of Beat Three. Pig always has his hands in every pie; he’d know if some individual had been hauling off all the turkey shoot prizes. I know I should know, too, but a sheriff’s got beaucoup chores to do, mostly idiot paperwork. I’ve lost touch since the last bond vote hired me four new deputies, all dirt-dumb. Well, old Pig has that laugh he can’t hold back, and he points his finger pistol-like at Robert, who’s got a shamed look on his face. “Pow,” he says at me or Bob, looking back and forth, just “Pow.” Seems Bob’s boy Earl, the one that ain’t got the sense of a chicken under that cowlick red as a rooster comb, is known to have sneaked Bob’s Colt a week before and shot every yellow sign he could till his pa ran him down and whacked him good, then locked him in the fall-down curing shed overnight—he’s a hard man, but he loves that boy. I remember once ... but how the hell can any half-wit you wouldn’t trust to milk hit the bull by the eye first time he ever gets loose with a handgun? “It’s easy,” says Bob, less shamed than afraid now he’ll have to pay for fresh metal—his people have always been tight—but he’s showing a grin I don’t like. “Real easy. He just cuts loose from the hip, five short feet back, sometimes maybe six, and comes back later to paint the target circles wheresomever his bullet hits. He aims that paintbrush right smart.” Blessed if I don’t feel the fool for being full dumbstruck at a trick Earl’s not bright enough to see as a joke. But I didn’t write it up nor charge a soul, just ground my cigar in the dirt and helped myself to a Dr. Pepper, made believe it didn’t mean a thing, but all day I’ve been riding, listening to crime reports on state radio— robbery at the mall, attempted rape maybe, wrecks on the bypass and a set fire in Brill’s deer woods. It gets to be too much. I shouldn’t even take the time to sit here watching this dark space where folks have been dancing all evening, hearing the quiet after all those raucous songs, but Alton, don’t you see, the feeble boy’s right, or half right, at least? It all comes to the same, whether you get what you want in the end or want what you get. The law works that way: each law makes more crime, but it’s not my job to say. Warm up my cup just one last time. I’ve got to circle Ampex once more before I turn it home. God, this dark feels right, no matter what flowers out there shed spring light. The dark is what hits me as holy. I’m calling it a day. Catch you later. Night.

Acting on an anonymous tip, a shift supervisor at a runaway shelter strip-searched six teenagers. Mrs. Haver was taping shut the mouths of talkative students by the time she neared retirement, and Mr. Vickers, a skilled electrician in his day, didn’t adapt when fuses became circuit breakers, a fact that didn’t stop him from tinkering in our basement until the house was consumed by flame. I used to want to be this bad at a job. I wanted to show up pissy drunk to staff meetings when the power point slides were already dissolving one into another, but I had this bad habit of showing up on time and more sober than any man should be when working audio/visual hospitality in a three star hotel that was a four star hotel before he started working there. When the entire North Atlantic blacked out, every soul in the Hyatt Regency Dearborn flooded the parking lot panicked about terrorists and rapture, while I plugged in microphones and taped down cables by flashlight—you know, in case whatever cataclysm unfolded didn’t preempt the meetings. Meetings, before which I’d convince a children’s hospital to pay fifteen dollars to rent a nine dollar laser pointer. Thirty-five bucks for a flip chart, extra paper on the house. Is it good to be good at a job if that job involves pretending to be a secret service agent for Phizer’s George Bush impersonator? I don’t know if it’s better to be good at a bad job or bad at a good job, but there must be some kind of satisfaction in doing a job so poorly, you’re never asked to do it again. I’m not saying he’s a hero, but there’s a guy out there who overloaded a transformer and made a difference, because in a moment, sweating through my suit, groping in the dark when my boss was already home, I learned that I’d work any job this hard, ache like this to know that I could always ache for something. There’s a hell for people like me where we shovel the coal we have mined ourselves into furnaces that burn the flesh from our bones nightly, and we never miss a shift.

water relives reservoir boat bottom draft displaced ° lineal thought backward body no one knows the brains I am now tree an oar origin joints ruptured soak in deep ink ° wallpaper remnant flower float chandelier brief case hundred words logged erode my Arabic congestion of resin person forecasts final position restless sleep ° width of back belted sodium poultice exhausts courtship agora drain a home of you wind lashes fronds cellophane ° where a mammal bled activity not yet diffused blackened patch of water weight of oyster in gloved hand he shucks dented pewter ° assonance her aspect relocated wind shatters plexi phenomena foregone for me shift at oars new muscle grown bone never held you ° case of dried apricot gorge I am summoned capable a day outlast forecast coral reef feeler ° paper cover mallet awl downfall fire- box androgyne

Skimming lightly, wheeling still, The swallows fly low Over the field in clouded days, The forest-field of Shiloh— Over the field where April rain Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain Through the pause of night That followed the Sunday fight Around the church of Shiloh— The church so lone, the log-built one, That echoed to many a parting groan And natural prayer Of dying foemen mingled there— Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— Fame or country least their care: (What like a bullet can undeceive!) But now they lie low, While over them the swallows skim, And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Four square monks drive a Coupe de Ville Through the vale, over the hill To get to where the savings are, They square their shoulders and point the car They bang their heads when the radio blares That song about the lady who bought the stairs And the dandy in back swirls down the chrome handle To cast weird sun on his pilgrim sandal Where tokens once slurried to a buttercup Hajj What now? O shimmering mercantile Alcatraz! Mobius ministries fringe the haze Of toothbrush choirs in a Yangtze glaze Foaming in pollens of this lobotomized valley Ever since Yankee Candle broke up Bee’s Alley Where skanking confederates Did trail natty satins, debt Free, and Sanity herself (Now a scent, top-shelf) Administered to gutter pirate queens Mini homecomings woven on the cosmic screen And whispered in a turtle’s ear, Kid monk you dream, it was the beer You vowed to brew Just like the thread will lose its screw Just like the brain will shed its wrinkles, Diverting shipwreck’s periwinkles To be reborn in a lonely place, Truth’s best conducted by an unclaimed face

Each morning I made my way among gangways, elevators, and nurses’ pods to Jane’s room to interrogate the grave helpers who tended her through the night while the ship’s massive engines kept its propellers turning. Week after week, I sat by her bed with black coffee and the Globe. The passengers on this voyage wore masks or cannulae or dangled devices that dripped chemicals into their wrists. I believed that the ship traveled to a harbor of breakfast, work, and love. I wrote: "When the infusions are infused entirely, bone marrow restored and lymphoblasts remitted, I will take my wife, bald as Michael Jordan, back to our dog and day." Today, months later at home, these words turned up on my desk as I listened in case Jane called for help, or spoke in delirium, ready to make the agitated drive to Emergency again for readmission to the huge vessel that heaves water month after month, without leaving port, without moving a knot, without arrival or destination, its great engines pounding.

The ship, solid and black, enters the clear blackness of the great harbor. Quiet and cold. —The people waiting are still asleep, dreaming, and warm, far away and still stretched out in this dream, perhaps . . . How real our watch is, beside the dream of doubt the others had! How sure it is, compared to their troubled dream about us! Quiet. Silence. Silence which in breaking up at dawn will speak differently.

I’m religious. As religious as the wind or scissors. It’s an ant, she’s religious, the flowers are red. I don’t want to die. I don’t care if I die now. I’m more religious than the dust in the desert. The mouth of a child is round. My eyes are syrup, dripping cold. Sometimes I think I baked nettles, but I didn’t. Sometimes I think I’m miserable, but I’m not. I’m religious. I will throw a barrel into the river. If bees rushed into my face, I’d scratch at them with my hand and would see again. I don’t get upset. The soul presses like the crowds at the door. When I die, oxen will graze the grass just like this. Houses will glimmer just like this. Translated from the Slovenian

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing; I look far out into the pregnant night, Where I can hear a solemn booming gun And catch the gleaming of a random light, That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing. My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing; For I would hail and check that ship of ships. I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud, My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips, And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing. O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing, O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark! Is there no hope for me? Is there no way That I may sight and check that speeding bark Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?