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It would never be possible for a stone, no more than for an airplane, to elevate itself toward the sun in jubilation. — Martin Heidegger The dragonflies again; the last time seeing them skim the river close to forgotten — their singing, their shimmer — now remembered, becoming so much flame; as tongues over the heads of the chosen in the child’s picture book of Christ I learned by heart, descent and weight of after the fact, the gift the fork between hope and vanity, the river that eats itself  turned mirror broken into light; the corpse between the beloved’s good word and the beloved who having spoken was ever spoken into being, lies, unspeaking, and as with any heaviness that lowers then hovers, remains inconceivable; so the letter given in stone, perfection in fire; love; all love’s failures; the winged animal drops to the earth and is there buried in a hole where it digs in the grit like the blade we left in the riverbed, adrift and cry- shaped in the memory, both that dim and that loud; though no accosting why it seems that way, everything ghost of itself or everything made of mythic proportion, the walker sinking from the face of the waters, the dragon I become when I talk to myself, what a belief is, terrifying and relentless; I’ve never been able to tell the difference; the brute and the apparition in reflection speak at once — the rock and the rock’s light — so that now the insect thrums and it is surely a kind of tenderness, an ODing in secret, turning into while turning from the soul the animal raised and devoured in dream; imagine, the child’s wished-for surface gives and ripples up to mouth the perfect imprint, saying “aircraft” and there are aircraft, amen, the walker is surrounded by flight on all sides; the walker walks without wings; see, the recollection is flawless, turning wings of  jewels; the recollection is absolute, swallows whole; echoes; and the dragon feasts; and the dragon flies again;

Love comes in spurts. RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS 1 And goes is gone cause for mourning head in hands in tears gonna be a long long wait for the resurrection of the dead. There are birds there is birdsong unmourning and unmournful at sunrise in the white light there is a garden with high walls around it jardin de plaisir of mint and lavender of hyssop in hedges glassy beads of water on velvet leaves purple-flaked lupin spikes above velvet pulmonaria there is a gardener la belle jardinière bare-breasted and bare-footed bouquets of all flowers in her arms and woven in her hair. 2 And it hurts not good but bad to see a man head in hands in tears it breaks you up to see a man come down in tears. There are birds there is birdsong having come through hunger and danger there is free song a free weaving of many songs song against song and other songs clustered/spun out in a blending of wavy pitches tant doucement the phrase means what the songs mean freshness that meaning so sweetly and freely as a gardener weaves flowers in her hair. 3 Can we stay in the weave of that meaning can we/should we attempt to stay to linger in a pleasure garden everlasting dream of love tomorrow its unseen/secret structure when our time remains a bad time and what time wasn’t bad wasn’t and isn’t a time of hunger and danger of young men and older men in tears our time a time of terror and counterterror can we/should we our time remaining a really bad time a really down and dirty time of terror what walls do not fall and who says they have no fear. 4 And boo-hoo-hoo like dolls hurts breaks you up like dolls get broken the visible human the visibly spastic plastic. There are birds there is birdsong unmourning and unmournful having come through there is a garden with swept gravel paths dream designed/bel et bon designed connecting and interconnecting non brisé where men and women are in contemplation in conversation in one another’s eyes there is a gardener holding her bouquets and holding her skirts like the light like so sweetly woven song like love never for sale.

You have installed a voice that can soothe you:agents of the eaten flesh, every body a cocoon of change— Puparium. The garden a birthing house,sarcophagidae— And green was so dark in the night-garden, in the garden's gourd of air— green's epitome of green's peace, the beautiful inhuman leg-music, crickets' thrum— a pulse to build their houses by, each successive molt a tent of skin in which skin can grow, the metallic sheen of their blue backs as they hatch out, winged and mouthed— Like in a charnel ground, you sit and see. In one of the Eight Great Cemeteries, you sit and see— How the skull-grounds are ringed by flame, how they spread out under a diamond tent, how the adepts pupate among bones— saying I who fear dying, I who fear being dead— Refuge field. See it now. That assembly of sages you would have yourself build, to hear the lineage from mouth to ear, encounter the truth- chain— Saying,Soft eaters, someone's children, who gives them refuge from want— Cynomyopsis Cadavarena. On every tongue they feed.

refuge temple 254 Purdy Street, Buffalo, NY, childhood home of Lucille Clifton There will be another storm always on the air Or in the air or are you the air Cold unrecognizable following The inside road This vessel bears one through Snow or time to find the house Paint peeling and maybe unfamiliar but the address Is to a place that doesn’t exist anymore An empty lot Now owned by the woman Next door who leases it to a Storefront church that needs the space for parking I take a selfie with the snowbank 254 Purdy Street Sunday morning they will plow and cars will fill the place Worshippers filing next door Names of the family who lived here forgotten Sayles their name was Sayles Well there’s Miss Bowden says the neighbor Who lives over there Ninety years old Lived here her whole life If anyone’d remember she would Though if the house don’t hold against the world And the body don’t hold against the world Snow falling down What can hold The church house the neighbor next door The snow Old Miss Bowden This empty lot We empty now Everybody drive home Song done over Snow river hover House is gone Stormsent era That Miss Bowden may remember The twelve-fingered girl who lived here We tell the neighbor: her name was Lucille Playing in the street Afraid of the dark Bringing the light salon des refusés East Side, Cleveland, OH, apartment building of Julie Patton In the house of Julie Patton Bumblebees do sing pollen In the cave of ears Every thing listens Jimi, Barack, and Marilyn Buck The saints of the place In vigil of excellent beings Light poles hold typical beasts Though here they empty themselves Into me Orange spaces do make A world again for though the gods are mythic The goddesses spin Dear Julie sing Me through the long hallway The dark one sleeved in your mother’s States of mind State of mine is the one that opens my body In heat through dark and salted moments Body is a book House does quiver Unwritten the way of how to find you House is the book In the language of feathers that launch Whose heart could race Winter air winter season that rushes How we in dark are slung The dark that opens its hallways Time mastered by Shiva and Hanuman I did stand in the empty space Filled by snow Then here in the sun-flirted front room Watched by Saint Nina Simone and Saint Joan Baez and Saint 
Buffy Sainte-Marie I wonder forward in Sapphic tongue Who is remember me Who is open me with their tongue Who languages the space of a house that don’t exist Better thought sun see Julie sing sanctified Sing swung sing one and one and one and one school house Barrington, Rhode Island, right near the Bay, home of C.D. Wright 
and Forrest Gander When she gives me directions and describes it to me I expect a red-room schoolhouse Driving across the water from Providence Into the stream-laced far shore Far shore where a boat unlands To determine the shape of what isn’t There I drive past wrong streets Wrong houses places whose bells I ring Stranger in the forest and dark-skinned too Where do I belong From the bathhouse I came Where I worshiped at all manner of strange altars Does this make me more or less human Tongue makes you human And how it translates the body into language To find the door as it was described to me Frosted glass and Japanese characters lining it School saying the language of the sun No sums add up here But she calls me in And I frown to know long to know What holds the house against the world How will words survive the dissolution of the body Of the planet’s core Sore and soar it came down through the cloud cover Gray-white curtains House of a dozen languages At the cold lake the far away lake She grabbed me post-lecture where I told about how I could not translate the words of the poet until I came to her own sun-loved city She begged me to always love all manner of strangers I thought she meant the regions of the body I’d have promised her anything though years later in Rhode Island Named for an island no one can find Lover I love you forever House that disappeared Books that live in the air Island that no one knows While on Purdy Street good people park their cars in the snow Go inside and sing We don’t have nothing more than this anymore No planet no lover no words no nothing no more

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes In their stone boots. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone. —Anne Sexton Pick up the smooth stone at your boot tip— Quickly blow the dust off the edge. This is for Sexton’s mother who died March 1959. This is for Sexton’s father who died June 1959. This is for love born in September 1949. When Autumn came, it left the trees bare. Leaves are but whisper ready to become snow. No sign of a harvest, no corn. This is for Anne. I breathe out carbon, breathe in carbon, in early October 1971. The stones in the river’s currents Are polished. I was conceived in the empty Winter. Little did I know when Coyote threw His one stone into the perfect pool, it meant One by one, we die just as amber mosquitoes. For the Navajo people, Coyote threw the stone Into the ocean for our survival. Across the ocean, Past television screens—Marie, sweet Marie— This is for Marie’s voice and scrolling words: Tumor in the back of the head. The black birds Fill the sky as icy hail: It Must Have Been Love. September 2002, I have lived another year. I wish Sweden to keep her goddess of music. Another new moon passes and I understand The word terminal. This is for Coyote And his ability to hide his life force. This again Is for understanding Sexton today. This is for My mother who will weave an AIDS quilt. She’ll use a loom and yarn and tears, this is for Love and hoping that when the universe ends We never hear the splash. We never hear th—

The regal eagle sits alone upon a tree that serves as throne. But sometimes when the eagle flies (though this might come as some surprise) a mob of crows may—wing to wing— together drive away that king. Democracy in beak and claw finds regal eagle's fatal flaw. And is that legal? I don't know. You'll have to ask a mobster crow.

A ward, and still in bonds, one day I stole abroad; It was high spring, and all the way Primrosed and hung with shade; Yet was it frost within, And surly winds Blasted my infant buds, and sin Like clouds eclipsed my mind. Stormed thus, I straight perceived my spring Mere stage and show, My walk a monstrous, mountained thing, Roughcast with rocks and snow; And as a pilgrim’s eye, Far from relief, Measures the melancholy sky, Then drops and rains for grief, So sighed I upwards still; at last ’Twixt steps and falls I reached the pinnacle, where placed I found a pair of scales; I took them up and laid In th’ one, late pains; The other smoke and pleasures weighed, But proved the heavier grains. With that some cried, “Away!” Straight I Obeyed, and led Full east, a fair, fresh field could spy; Some called it Jacob’s bed, A virgin soil which no Rude feet ere trod, Where, since he stepped there, only go Prophets and friends of God. Here I reposed; but scarce well set, A grove descried Of stately height, whose branches met And mixed on every side; I entered, and once in, Amazed to see ’t, Found all was changed, and a new spring Did all my senses greet. The unthrift sun shot vital gold, A thousand pieces, And heaven its azure did unfold, Checkered with snowy fleeces; The air was all in spice, And every bush A garland wore; thus fed my eyes, But all the ear lay hush. Only a little fountain lent Some use for ears, And on the dumb shades language spent The music of her tears; I drew her near, and found The cistern full Of divers stones, some bright and round, Others ill-shaped and dull. The first, pray mark, as quick as light Danced through the flood, But the last, more heavy than the night, Nailed to the center stood; I wondered much, but tired At last with thought, My restless eye that still desired As strange an object brought. It was a bank of flowers, where I descried Though ’twas midday, Some fast asleep, others broad-eyed And taking in the ray; Here, musing long, I heard A rushing wind Which still increased, but whence it stirred No where I could not find. I turned me round, and to each shade Dispatched an eye To see if any leaf had made Least motion or reply, But while I listening sought My mind to ease By knowing where ’twas, or where not, It whispered, “Where I please.” “Lord,” then said I, “on me one breath, And let me die before my death!” Cant. chap. 5. ver. 17 Arise O North, and come thou South-wind and blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.

"O, maister deere, and fadir reverent! Mi maister Chaucer, flour of eloquence, Mirour of fructuous entendement, O, universel fadir in science! Allas! that thou thyn excellent prudence In thi bed mortel mightist naght byqwethe; What eiled Deth? Allas! whi wolde he sle the? "O Deth! thou didest naght harme singuleer In slaghtere of him; but al this land it smertith; But nathelees, yit hast thou no power His name sle; his hy vertu astertith Unslayn fro the, which ay us lyfly hertyth, With bookes of his ornat endytyng, That is to al this land enlumynyng. "Hast thou nat eeke my maister Gower slayn, Whos vertu I am insufficient For to descreyve? I woot wel in certayn, For to sleen al this world thou haast yment; But syn our lorde Crist was obedient To the, in feith I can no ferther seye; His creatures mosten the obeye." Simple is my goost, and scars my letterure, Unto your excellence for to write Myn inward love, and yit in aventure Wyle I me putte, thogh I can but lyte. Mi dere maistir—God his soule quyte!— And fadir, Chaucer, fayn wolde han me taght; But I was dul, and lerned lite or naght. Allas! my worthi maister honorable, This landes verray tresor and richesse, Deth, by thi deth, hath harme irreparable Unto us doon; hir vengeable duresse Despoiled hath this land of the swetnesse Of rethorik; for un-to Tullius Was never man so lyk a-monges us. Also, who was hier in philosophie To Aristotle, in our tonge, but thow? The steppes of Virgile in poesie Thow filwedist eeke. Men wot wel y-now That combre-world that the, my maistir, slow. Wold I slayn were! Deth was to hastyf To renne on the, and reve the thi lyf. She myghte han taried hir vengeance awhile, Til that sum man had egal to the be. Nay, lat be that! sche knew wel that this yle May never man forth brynge lyk to the, And hir office needes do mot she; God bad hir so, I truste as for thi beste; O maister, maister, God thi soule reste!

Kurt, early twenties. Met him after an AA meeting in Silverlake (November, eighty-five). I remem- ber standing with him up- stairs, in the clubhouse, how I checked his body out. But not who approached whom. Or what we talked about before we leaned against my car and kissed, under that tarnished L.A. moon. Drove to my place and un- dressed him in the dark. He was smaller than me. I couldn’t keep my hands off his ass. Next morning, smoked till he woke, took him back. He thanked me sweetly. I couldn’t have said what I wanted, though must have known. Drove home and put him in a poem ("November") I was at the end of. Later that day it rained (I know from the poem).

We wear harnesses like crossing guards. In a pouch over the heart, over stent and bypass, a black box with leads pressed onto metal nipples. We pedal and tread and row while our signals are picked up by antennas on the ceiling, X’s like the eyes cartoonists give the dead. Angels of telemetry with vials of nitro watch over us. We beam to their monitors now a barn dance, now a moonwalk. They cuff us and pump and we keep on so tomorrow will live off today. Nurse, we won’t forget the animated video of our cholesterol highway where LDL, black-hatted scowling donut holes on wheels, blocked traffic. But with muscles like gutta-percha, can we leave time’s gurney in the dust? By now only the dead know more about gravity than we do. In reply, a tape of Little Richard or Jerry Lee comes on and we’re singing, aloud or not, all pale infarcted pedalers, rowers, treadmillers, and our hearts are rising in the east.