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As the guests arrive at our son’s party they gather in the living room— short men, men in first grade with smooth jaws and chins. Hands in pockets, they stand around jostling, jockeying for place, small fights breaking out and calming. One says to another How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So? They eye each other, seeing themselves tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their throats a lot, a room of small bankers, they fold their arms and frown.I could beat you up, a seven says to a six, the midnight cake, round and heavy as a turret behind them on the table. My son, freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks, chest narrow as the balsa keel of a model boat, long hands cool and thin as the day they guided him out of me, speaks up as a host for the sake of the group. We could easily kill a two-year-old, he says in his clear voice. The other men agree, they clear their throats like Generals, they relax and get down to playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise, She rises in the sunshine. There she goes, Back to the bars she knew and the repose In love-rooms and the things in people's eyes. Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge. Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.

The sleds of the children Move down the right slope. To the left, hazed in the tumbling air, A thousand lights smudge Within the branches of the old forest, Like colored moons in a well of milk. The sleds of the children Make no sound on the hard-packed snow. Their bright cries are not heard On that strange hill. The youngest are wrapped In cloth of gold, and their scarfs Have been dipped in blood. All the others, from the son Of Tegos, who is the Bishop Of Black Church—near Tarn, On to the daughter of the least slut, Are garbed in love's shining dress; Naked little eels, they flash Across the amazed ice. And behind each sled There trots a man with his sex Held like a whip in his snaking hand. But no one sees the giant horse That climbs the steps which stretch forth Between the calling lights and that hill Straight up to the throne of God. He is taller than the highest tree And his flanks steam under the cold moon. The beat of his heart shakes the sky And his reaching muzzle snuffles At the most ancient star. * The innocent alone approach evil Without fear; in their appointed flame They acknowledge all living things. The only evil is doubt; the only good Is not death, but life. To be is to love. This I thought as I stood while the snow Fell in that bitter place, and the riders Rode their motionless sleds into a nowhere Of sleep. Ah, God, we can walk so easily, Bed with women, do every business That houses and roads are for, scratch Our shanks and lug candles through These caves; but, God, we can't believe, We can't believe in anything. Because nothing is pure enough. Because nothing will ever happen To make us good in our own sight. Because nothing is evil enough. * I squat on my heels, raise my head To the moon, and howl. I dig my nails into my sides, And laugh when the snow turns red. As I bend to drink, I laugh at everything that anyone loves. All your damn horses climbing to heaven

As I enter the theatre the play is going on. I hear the father say to the son on stage, You’ve taken the motor apart. The son replies, The roof is leaking. The father retorts, The tire is flat. Tiptoeing down the aisle, I find my seat, edge my way in across a dozen kneecaps as I tremble for my sanity. I have heard doomed voices calling on god the electrode. Sure enough, as I start to sit a scream rises from beneath me. It is one of the players. If I come down, I’ll break his neck, caught between the seat and the backrest. Now the audience and the players on stage, their heads turned towards me, are waiting for the sound of the break. Must I? Those in my aisle nod slowly, reading my mind, their eyes fixed on me, and I understand that each has done the same. Must I kill this man as the price of my admission to this play? His screams continue loud and long. I am at a loss as to what to do, I panic, I freeze. My training has been to eat the flesh of pig. I might even have been able to slit a throat. As a child I witnessed the dead chickens over a barrel of sawdust absorbing their blood. I then brought them in a bag to my father who sold them across his counter. Liking him, I learned to like people and enjoy their company too, which of course brought me to this play. But how angry I become. Now everybody is shouting at me to sit down, sit down or I’ll be thrown out. The father and son have stepped off stage and come striding down the aisle side by side. They reach me, grab me by the shoulder and force me down. I scream, I scream, as if to cover the sound of the neck breaking. All through the play I scream and am invited on stage to take a bow. I lose my senses and kick the actors in the teeth. There is more laughter and the actors acknowledge my performance with a bow. How should I understand this? Is it to say that if I machine-gun the theatre from left to right they will respond with applause that would only gradually diminish with each death? I wonder then whether logically I should kill myself too out of admiration. A question indeed, as I return to my seat and observe a new act of children playfully aiming their kicks at each other’s groins.

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

EAST OF EDEN is mountains & desert until you cross the passes into India  . It is 3 o’clock in the afternoon or twenty of 8 at night, depending which clock you believe  . AND WEST IS WEST It’s where the cups and saucers are, the plates, the knives and forks  . The turkey sandwich comes alone or with onions if you like The old newspaperman always takes his hat off & lays it atop the cigarette machine; the younger, so-hip journalist, leaves his on old-style . The old man sits down in the corner, puts his hat back on. No challenge, but it’s visible, the beau geste  . The cigarette hangs from the side of the younger man’s mouth, he’s putting himself on  . East of Eden is mountains & desert & every thing creeps up on you & comes in the night, unexpectedly  . when one would least put out his hand to offer, or to defend  .

Late afternoons, we'd tuck up our hems under Minisa Bridge, scrape our white knees on scrub brush and drowned trees to slide down the dirt bank past milk-weed gone to seed, cattails and trash to sit on stones at the edge of the river and giggle and smoke, waiting to wolf-whistle North High's rowing team. In the shadows where the milk-chocolate river unfolded, ooze between our toes, we'd strip, risk long-legged insects, leeches and mothers for the silt slick on our thighs, the air thick with the smell of honeysuckle, mud—the rest of the day somewhere downstream. We didn't know why, but none of us wanted to go home to polite kitchens and mothers patiently waiting for what happened next, the way women have always waited for hunter husbands, kept vigils and prayed at the entrance of mines.

When we river, blood fills cracks in bullet shells, oars become fingers scratching windows into dawn, and faces are stirred from mounds of mica. I notice the back isn’t as smooth anymore, the river crests at the moment of blinking; its blood vessels stiffen and spear the drenched coat of flies collecting outside the jaw. Night slows here, the first breath held back, clenched like a tight fist in the arroyo under shattered glass. But we still want to shake the oxygen loose from flypaper, hack its veins, divert its course, and reveal its broken back, the illusion of a broken back.

God knows the law of life is death, and you can feel it in your warbler neck, your river-quick high stick wrist at the end of day. But the trophies: a goldfinch tearing up a pink thistle, a magpie dipping her wing tips in a white cloud, an ouzel barreling hip-high upstream with a warning. You wish you had a river. To make a river, it takes some mountains. Some rain to watershed. You wish you had a steady meadow and pink thistles bobbing at the border for your horizons, pale robins bouncing their good postures in the spruce shadows. Instead, the law of life comes for you like three men and a car. In your dreams, you win them over with your dreams: a goldfinch tearing up a pink thistle. A magpie so slow she knows how to keep death at bay, she takes her time with argument and hides her royal blue in black. Shy as a blue grouse, nevertheless God doesn’t forget his green mountains. You wish you had a river.

Coming east we left the animals pelican beaver osprey muskrat and snake their hair and skin and feathers their eyes in the dark: red and green. Your finger drawing my mouth. Blessed are they who remember that what they now have they once longed for.