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Like the moon that night, my father — a distant body, white and luminous. How small I was back then, looking up as if from dark earth. Distant, his body white and luminous, my father stood in the doorway. Looking up as if from dark earth, I saw him outlined in a scrim of light. My father stood in the doorway as if to watch over me as I dreamed. When I saw him outlined — a scrim of light — he was already waning, turning to go. Once, he watched over me as I dreamed. How small I was. Back then, he was already turning to go, waning like the moon that night — my father.

Treachery abounds, look inwards! Your bird jangles its small swing. You’re getting sleepy, very sleepy. In a vulnerable tyranny. Leave for now the marksmen to their desolations, they ruin everyday life. & luck can’t do anything about the undying devotion of the undead, putting their backs to the bus shelter while crumbs still stick to the dishes. I guess someone is a king of France & apart from whom nobody is a king of France. Same rockstar, different poem. I like icons & the toxic halos of figureheads, I like to beat people up & rehash among the swan. I was born in captivity, having fucked the right people, thick in the France of it. The uniform you design may still be stripped & not in some pleasant mannerism. I guess treachery abounds & scruple keys the addresses out of their shining wrappers. I guess gin relieves the need for whiskey, I guess I can think as well as talk. Come to think of it, I spoke to your exo- skeleton. It had been sacked for cribbing a back salary from your stunt double. I watched you chewing & the human body is a great mystery. Sun, look out for yourself. Embody your own adaptation. You’ve got no corner on fire & marauders upbraid those vehicles invisible to them. Nobody is a king of France, licked all over like a stamp, my every garbage at the actual border, making it, making it over, taking up the slack. The bottle broke in your bag & you’re getting flammable, very flammable. Luck knows nothing, peels down like a stocking & I thought, why wait any longer, & found myself caught in the breast of the beast as it staggered to carry me up the stairs. His clothes are dirty, but his hands are a sumptuous pyre. What’s so perfect about a stranger, the greasy smoke of being swallowed up or disappearing. I can’t carry the remainder.

Coldly, sadly descends The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent;—hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows;—but cold, Solemn, unlighted, austere, Through the gathering darkness, arise The chapel-walls, in whose bound Thou, my father! art laid. There thou dost lie, in the gloom Of the autumn evening. But ah! That word, gloom, to my mind Brings thee back, in the light Of thy radiant vigour, again; In the gloom of November we pass'd Days not dark at thy side; Seasons impair'd not the ray Of thy buoyant cheerfulness clear. Such thou wast! and I stand In the autumn evening, and think Of bygone autumns with thee. Fifteen years have gone round Since thou arosest to tread, In the summer-morning, the road Of death, at a call unforeseen, Sudden. For fifteen years, We who till then in thy shade Rested as under the boughs Of a mighty oak, have endured Sunshine and rain as we might, Bare, unshaded, alone, Lacking the shelter of thee. O strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain! Somewhere, surely afar, In the sounding labour-house vast Of being, is practised that strength, Zealous, beneficent, firm! Yes, in some far-shining sphere, Conscious or not of the past, Still thou performest the word Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live— Prompt, unwearied, as here! Still thou upraisest with zeal The humble good from the ground, Sternly repressest the bad! Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse Those who with half-open eyes Tread the border-land dim 'Twixt vice and virtue; reviv'st, Succourest!—this was thy work, This was thy life upon earth. What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth?— Most men eddy about Here and there—eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and then they die— Perish;—and no one asks Who or what they have been, More than he asks what waves, In the moonlit solitudes mild Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd, Foam'd for a moment, and gone. And there are some, whom a thirst Ardent, unquenchable, fires, Not with the crowd to be spent, Not without aim to go round In an eddy of purposeless dust, Effort unmeaning and vain. Ah yes! some of us strive Not without action to die Fruitless, but something to snatch From dull oblivion, nor all Glut the devouring grave! We, we have chosen our path— Path to a clear-purposed goal, Path of advance!—but it leads A long, steep journey, through sunk Gorges, o'er mountains in snow. Cheerful, with friends, we set forth— Then on the height, comes the storm. Thunder crashes from rock To rock, the cataracts reply, Lightnings dazzle our eyes. Roaring torrents have breach'd The track, the stream-bed descends In the place where the wayfarer once Planted his footstep—the spray Boils o'er its borders! aloft The unseen snow-beds dislodge Their hanging ruin; alas, Havoc is made in our train! Friends, who set forth at our side, Falter, are lost in the storm. We, we only are left! With frowning foreheads, with lips Sternly compress'd, we strain on, On—and at nightfall at last Come to the end of our way, To the lonely inn 'mid the rocks; Where the gaunt and taciturn host Stands on the threshold, the wind Shaking his thin white hairs— Holds his lantern to scan Our storm-beat figures, and asks: Whom in our party we bring? Whom we have left in the snow? Sadly we answer: We bring Only ourselves! we lost Sight of the rest in the storm. Hardly ourselves we fought through, Stripp'd, without friends, as we are. Friends, companions, and train, The avalanche swept from our side. But thou woulds't not alone Be saved, my father! alone Conquer and come to thy goal, Leaving the rest in the wild. We were weary, and we Fearful, and we in our march Fain to drop down and to die. Still thou turnedst, and still Beckonedst the trembler, and still Gavest the weary thy hand. If, in the paths of the world, Stones might have wounded thy feet, Toil or dejection have tried Thy spirit, of that we saw Nothing—to us thou wage still Cheerful, and helpful, and firm! Therefore to thee it was given Many to save with thyself; And, at the end of thy day, O faithful shepherd! to come, Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. And through thee I believe In the noble and great who are gone; Pure souls honour'd and blest By former ages, who else— Such, so soulless, so poor, Is the race of men whom I see— Seem'd but a dream of the heart, Seem'd but a cry of desire. Yes! I believe that there lived Others like thee in the past, Not like the men of the crowd Who all round me to-day Bluster or cringe, and make life Hideous, and arid, and vile; But souls temper'd with fire, Fervent, heroic, and good, Helpers and friends of mankind. Servants of God!—or sons Shall I not call you? Because Not as servants ye knew Your Father's innermost mind, His, who unwillingly sees One of his little ones lost— Yours is the praise, if mankind Hath not as yet in its march Fainted, and fallen, and died! See! In the rocks of the world Marches the host of mankind, A feeble, wavering line. Where are they tending?—A God Marshall'd them, gave them their goal. Ah, but the way is so long! Years they have been in the wild! Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks Rising all round, overawe; Factions divide them, their host Threatens to break, to dissolve. —Ah, keep, keep them combined! Else, of the myriads who fill That army, not one shall arrive; Sole they shall stray; in the rocks Stagger for ever in vain, Die one by one in the waste. Then, in such hour of need Of your fainting, dispirited race, Ye, like angels, appear, Radiant with ardour divine! Beacons of hope, ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, re-inspire the brave! Order, courage, return. Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God.

Discipline. Free will Doesn't mean freewheel. But what about Eros?Let Eros harrow whom he will. I have sipped my sip And poisoned the well. I am well pleased with my thirst. I know my thirst no evil. You'll die of thirst, Shail. If  the salt sea wills.

gone from a man claimed the girl a man named the girl got the girl stored up in his room • ran away runaway gone Dinah gone • 19years of age about five foot three inches brown hair         a cask-shaped mark over her left eye • no one speaks no speech just hatching • thought he knew her well when she was in there with him not a word was spoken who to trust now? thought he knew • presents a gap between her upper foreteeth when she smiles

Who has the moral high ground? Fifteen blocks from the whitehouse on small corners in northwest, d.c. boys disguised as me rip each other’s hearts out with weapons made in china. they fight for territory. across the planet in a land where civilization was born the boys of d.c. know nothing about their distant relatives in Rwanda. they have never heard of the hutu or tutsi people. their eyes draw blanks at the mention of kigali, byumba or butare. all they know are the streets of d.c., and do not cry at funerals anymore. numbers and frequency have a way of making murder commonplace and not news unless it spreads outside of our house, block, territory. modern massacres are intraethnic. bosnia, sri lanka, burundi, nagorno-karabakh, iraq, laos, angola, liberia, and rwanda are small foreign names on a map made in europe. when bodies by the tens of thousands float down a river turning the water the color of blood, as a quarter of a million people flee barefoot into tanzania and zaire, somehow we notice. we do not smile, we have no more tears. we hold our thoughts. In deeply muted silence looking south and thinking that today nelson mandela seems much larger than he is.

The hard thing’s to sit without being noticed. Everything else will come easy. Three sips and the impulse returns to sit thinking alone. Against the buzzing backdrop of noise everything fades, and it’s suddenly a miracle to be born and to stare at the glass. And work (a man who’s alone can’t not think of work) becomes again the old fate that suffering’s good for focusing thought. And soon the eyes fix on nothing particular, grieved, as if blind. If this man gets up and goes home to sleep, he’ll look like a blind man that’s lost. Anyone could jump out of nowhere to brutally beat him. A woman—beautiful, young—might appear, and lie under a man in the street, and moan, the way a woman once moaned under him. But this man doesn’t see. He heads home to sleep and life becomes nothing but the buzzing of silence. Undressing this man you’d find a body that’s wasted and, here and there, patches of fur. Who’d think, to look at this man, that life once burned in his lukewarm veins? No one would guess that there was a woman, once, who gently touched that body, who kissed that body, which shakes, and wet it with tears, now that the man, having come home to sleep, can’t sleep, only moan.

Often visitors there, saddened by lack of trees, go out to a promontory. Then, backed by the banded sunset, the trail of the Conquistadores, the father puts on the camera, the leather albatross, and has the children imitate saguaros. One at a time they stand there smiling, fingers up like the tines of a fork while the stately saguaro goes on being entered by wrens, diseases, and sunlight. The mother sits on a rock, arms folded across her breasts. To her the cactus looks scared, its needles like hair in cartoons. With its arms in preacher or waltz position, it gives the impression of great effort in every direction, like the mother. Thousands of these gray-green cacti cross the valley: nature repeating itself, children repeating nature, father repeating children and mother watching. Later, the children think the cactus was moral, had something to teach them, some survival technique or just regular beauty. But what else could it do? The only protection against death was to love solitude.

I Machine stitched rivets ravel on a tree Whose name he does not know. Left in the sky, He dangles from a silken cumulus (Stork’s bundle upside down On the delivering wind) and sees unborn Incredible jungles of the lizard’s eye: Dark fern, dark river, a shale coliseum Mountained above one smudgepot in the trees That was his surreal rug on metered skies And slid afire into this fourth dimension Whose infinite point of meeting parallels He marks in ultra-space, suspended from The chords of fifty centuries Descending to their past—a ripping sound That snags him limb by limb. He tears and falls Louder than any fruit dropped from the trees, And finds himself in mud on hands and knees. II The opened buckle frees him from his times. He walks three paces dressed in dripping fleece And tears it off. The great bird of his chute Flaps in the trees: he salvages its hide And starts a civilization. He has a blade, Seventeen matches, his sheepskin, and his wits. Spaceman Crusoe at the wreck of time, He ponders unseen footprints of his fear. No-eyes watch his nothing deep in nowhere. III He finds the wreck (the embers of himself) Salvages bits of metal, bakelite, glass— Dials twisted from himself, his poverty. Three hours from time still ticking on his wrist The spinning bobbins of the time machine Jam on an afternoon of Genesis And flights of birds blow by like calendars From void to void. Did worlds die or did he? He studies twisted props of disbelief Wondering what ruin to touch. He counts his change (“Steady now, steady ...”) flips heads or tails and sees The coin fall into roots. An omen? (“Steady ...”) He laughs (a nerve’s slow tangling like a vine) Speaks to himself, shouts, listens, hears a surf Of echo rolling back to strand him there In tide pools of dead time by caves of fear, And enters to himself, denned in his loss, Tick-tick, a bloodbeat building on his wrist, Ratcheting down the dead teeth of a skull (The fossil of himself) sucked out of sight Past heads and tails, past vertebrae and gill To bedrocks out of time, with time to kill.

He can only drink tea now, screwed and filed. She is dead, in metal flecks. 55 years old and look like a bad nail by God they yanked me out I can tell you