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Let’s not wrestle with water anymore— Enters until we flexible in its acceptance Persistent in entering through green or brown windowpanes jagged from years of sun Lights out across the street yr candle dances still or flashlight we send signals interrupted by slinging branches Tonight is O.K.— after all you walk by the window tip yr head at the orange sky blue lightning partially our rainbow People not alone in the percussive squalls (Caribbean music) Sole leaf flicked by adolescent wind gone August 25,2005

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done, And start their silent swinging, one by one. Black horses drive a mower through the weeds, And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds. His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.

(Hindenburg Line, April 1917) Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air. Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know; A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead. Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug. And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug. “I’m looking for headquarters.” No reply. “God blast your neck!” (For days he’d had no sleep.) “Get up and guide me through this stinking place.” Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard of ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat and horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step.

That is why I am here not among the ibises. Why the permanent city parasol covers even me. It was the rains in the occult season. It was the snows on the lower slopes. It was water and cold in my mouth. A lack of shoes on what appeared to be cobbles which were still antique Well wild wild whatever in wild more silent blue the vase grips the stems petals fall    the chrysanthemum darkens Sometimes this mustard feeling clutches me also. My sleep is reckoned in straws Yet I wake up and am followed into the street.

My life is vile I hate it so I’ll wait awhile And then I’ll go. Why wait at all? Hope springs alive, Good may befall I yet may thrive. It is because I can’t make up my mind If God is good, impotent or unkind.

For our own private reasons We live in each other for an hour. Stranger, I take your body and its seasons, Aware the moon has gone a little sour For us. The moon hangs up there like a stone Shaken out of its proper setting. We lie down in each other. We lie down alone and watch the moon’s flawed marble getting Out of hand. What are the dead doing tonight? The padlocks of their tongues embrace the black, Each syllable locked in place, tucked out of sight. Even this moon could never pull them back, Even if it held them in its arms And weighed them down with stones, Took them entirely on their own terms And piled the orchard’s blossom on their bones. I am aware of your body and its dangers. I spread my cloak for you in leafy weather Where other fugitives and other strangers Will put their mouths together.

Your first dog is ever your one dog And no story has a happy ending anymore. We have all wasted lives, sometimes we waste Our own. Some nights are long ones, some Never end at all. I don’t know how we can fall in love, which implies landing, Whereas love promises everything but. That’s why I like to listen to birds call At dusk to each other from the acacias But then I recall it’s still daylight and I Hear them in the absence of the trees. When I am traveling by train over mountains All I think of is the sea. My father was Never quite so alive until he died and now He’s immortal. Somebody must do the calculus, Somebody must work out the logic of the logic Of this spectacle because spectacle’s the last Word anyone would use for dreams that don’t cease, For the sound of weeping coming from the next room, Only there’s no next room and we’re the only ones There, though just for a moment and a lifetime more. Listen, I will tell you a secret, the secret you told Me once on the train into the mountains On the journey to the shore, a time long ago when We spoke and never met.That secret, which is ours. Some nights are so long the old dog comes home To us who remain there waiting and waiting Even if we’ve never been here before, where we are.

There is a wall of which the stones Are lies and bribes and dead men's bones. And wrongfully this evil wall Denies what all men made for all, And shamelessly this wall surrounds Our homesteads and our native grounds. But I will gather and I will ride, And I will summon a countryside, And many a man shall hear my halloa Who never had thought the horn to follow; And many a man shall ride with me Who never had thought on earth to see High Justice in her armoury. When we find them where they stand, A mile of men on either hand, I mean to charge from right away And force the flanks of their array, And press them inward from the plains, And drive them clamouring down the lanes, And gallop and harry and have them down, And carry the gates and hold the town. Then shall I rest me from my ride With my great anger satisfied. Only, before I eat and drink, When I have killed them all, I think That I will batter their carven names, And slit the pictures in their frames, And burn for scent their cedar door, And melt the gold their women wore, And hack their horses at the knees, And hew to death their timber trees, And plough their gardens deep and through— And all these things I mean to do For fear perhaps my little son Should break his hands, as I have done.

An erasure of Lydia Huntley Sigourney’s “On Seeing the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Girl, Sitting for Her Portrait” Guide, passion, catch what Hath no speech. Unknown Joys, power, and meditation’s Unfolding sky. Feeling draws Heart and wildering language Still without speech to Mind. Philosophy fails to Sway this future child.

Recall the carousel. Its round and round. Its pink lights blinking off and on. The children’s faces painted garish colors against an institutional wall. And the genetics. The We won’t be here too long...Do not step off... The carousel? Do you recall? As if we were our own young parents suffering again after so many hundreds of hours of bliss. And even the startling fact that what had always been feared might come to pass: A familiar sweater in a garbage can. A surgeon bent over our baby, wearing a mask. But surely you recall how happily and for how long we watched our pretty hostages go round. They waved at us too many times to count. Their dancing foals. Their lacquered mares. Even a blue-eyed hunting hound was still allowed back then.