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Tonight Hazard’s father and stepmother are having jazz for McGovern. In the old game-room the old liberals listen as the quintet builds crazy houses out of skin and brass, crumbling the house of decorum, everybody likes that. For decades they have paid for the refurbishing of America and they have not got their money’s worth. Now they listen, hopeful, to the hard rock for McGovern. The ceiling in this palace needs fixing, the chalky blue paint is like an old heaven but there are holes and flaking. They had movies here when grandpa was solvent. Hazard desires his wife, the way people on the trains to the death camps were seized by irrational lust. She is the youngest woman in the room, he would like to be in bed with her now, he would like to be president. He has not been to his studio in four days, he asks the bartender, a college boy with a ponytail, for more gin. He stands in the doorway. Forsythia and lilac have overgrown the porch, there is the rich smell of wood-rot. What twenty years will do to untended shrubbery and America and Hazard.

This is what he dreams of: a map of burned land, a mound of dirt in the early century’s winter. A map of burned land? A country is razed in the early century’s winter. And God descends. A country is raised because of industry. And God descends, messengers rush inside because of industry, in spite of diplomats. Messengers rush inside to haunt the darkened aisles. In spite of diplomats, the witnesses know well to haunt the darkened aisles, experimentally— the witnesses know well that ushers dressed in black experimentally lurk by the cushioned seats. That ushers dress in black should tell you something: lurking by the cushioned seats, the saved and the terrible. I should tell you something: this is what he dreams of, the saved and the terrible— a mound of dirt.

End of the day. A bar where you ought to leave a tip. The green bird was saying pretty pretty pretty, loved ones were walking home across the city. I waved at the girl who waves her whip    ... but please be certain I’m a citizen    ... I take stuff to the dump    ...    or maybe it’s the tip? I’m where the nitty really meets the gritty. I know I find it hard to listen. I read too much. I often need a drink. It isn’t the world that makes us think, it’s words that we can’t come up with. Sure, I can work up fresh examples and send them off to the committee. But the poetry is in the bird. And in the pretty.

Polly, put the kettle on, Polly, put the kettle on, Polly, put the kettle on, We'll all have tea. Sukey, take it off again, Sukey, take it off again, Sukey, take it off again, They've all gone away.

From flowering gnarled trees they come, weighing down the branches, dropping with a soft sound onto the loamy ground. Falling and fallen. That’s a pome. Common as an apple. Or more rare. A quince or pear. A knife paring away soft skin exposes tart sweet flesh. And deeper in, five seeds in a core are there to make more pomes. Look how it fits in my hand. What to do? What to do? I could give it to you. Or leave it on the table with a note both true and untrue: Ceci n’est pas un poème. I could paint it as a still life, a small window of light in the top right corner (only a dab of the whitest white), a place to peer in and watch it change and darken as pomes will do. O I remember days.... Climbing the branches of a tree ripe and heavy with pomes. Taking whatever I wanted. There were always enough then. Always enough.

Ventura because she was hungry and because She was curious—but more because she was curious— Took the dare, a kiss for a pomegranate. Everyone gathered, her friends and his. Everyone Watched: the boys, the girls, the pigs and the chickens, And more. Moving to the front were the children She and Clemente would one day have, And the children of those children, too, Gathered and loud with everyone and everything else, Loud as the pigs and fast as the chickens Though she could not see them. Still, they crowded her, and she could feel Their anxious breathing. This boy Clemente whom she would kiss She would have kissed even without the pomegranate, Though she could not say it And was glad of this game. He suited her, She thought. He had a strong face. He felt what she felt. She could see him look around But not at their friends. She could see him Feel the shiver of the children they would have: Their son Margarito, his two sisters Both of whom would become nuns If just to pray enough to take care of him, This boy so serious he would seem like a stranger In their arms, serious enough by himself To make up for Clemente and Ventura And for all the laughter They themselves would feel, This curious child who, as an old man Would never trust a doctor for anything. And his serious wife to come, Refugio, And her sisters, Matilde and Consuelo as well, All the people who would follow this kiss, So many of them, and their children, too, Everyone stood there, arms up, everyone watching, So much noise in this moment, This quick lending of herself To his cheek, the way Ventura would later kiss All these impatient children of theirs. The kiss Seemed so small, but was filled with itself. This small moment of affection she gave this boy The quarter-second that it took: There they all stood, waiting with the crowd Egging them on, hefting the pomegranate And pushing them toward each other. Clemente and Ventura in that quarter-second lived Their lives, a quarter-second not finished yet.

Once when I was living in the heart of a pomegranate, I heard a seed saying, “Someday I shall become a tree, and the wind will sing in my branches, and the sun will dance on my leaves, and I shall be strong and beautiful through all the seasons.” Then another seed spoke and said, “When I was as young as you, I too held such views; but now that I can weigh and measure things, I see that my hopes were vain.” And a third seed spoke also, “I see in us nothing that promises so great a future.” And a fourth said, “But what a mockery our life would be, without a greater future!” Said a fifth, “Why dispute what we shall be, when we know not even what we are.” But a sixth replied, “Whatever we are, that we shall continue to be.” And a seventh said, “I have such a clear idea how everything will be, but I cannot put it into words.” Then an eight spoke—and a ninth—and a tenth—and then many—until all were speaking, and I could distinguish nothing for the many voices. And so I moved that very day into the heart of a quince, where the seeds are few and almost silent.

As I walked up the Rue des Martyrs with my bag of small, perfect, waxy potatoes I doffed my imaginary hat to Monsieur Parmentier. Well, I do have a hat and wore it a lot not so long ago to cover a healing wound on my forehead but this wasn’t necessary anymore, and anyway the hat wasn’t with me now in Paris. Nor was Monsieur Parmentier, though any remains of him lie in a plot in Père Lachaise ringed by potato plants. I would not be intending to cook my potatoes if not for the duplicitous actions of Parmentier back in the late years of the 18th century. After he’d realized that this odd-shaped tuber looted from the Incas in Peru (along with their gold and silver) was extremely nutritious, and no one would believe him, he’d come up with a ruse. Using money given to him by King Louis XVI, he purchased a plot of impoverished ground outside Paris, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and planted it with potatoes. When the time to dig them came, he built a fence around them and put armed guards outside it. These men wore uniforms the color of potatoes. They were told to leak the news that they were guarding an extremely precious food. Then, one night, they left their post. Thieves arrived within a couple of hours and stole the entire crop. Over the next few days the potatoes were sold in the city’s markets as the food of kings. So my guests wouldn’t know they would be eating the food of kings. Nor would I tell them, though I might well concoct a story about the breed of pigs their pork chops had come from. And the posh wine that had yielded the wine vinegar I’d used in the salad dressing. I could try telling them I’d climbed over the fence of Père Lachaise the previous night, armed with a phone-torch, a troweling spade, and a canvas bag, and dug the potatoes from Monsieur Parmentier’s plot — only taking the small ones that were right for pommes sautées, of course — but I know they wouldn’t believe me. I was distracted from these smug reveries by my mobile phone ringing. I dug it out of my pocket and answered it, thinking one advantage of being in France was that nobody rang me. The voice at the other end was not one I recognized. It said, at first quietly, “Are you OK?” then in a louder voice, “Please tell me you’re OK over there,” and that was it. When I went to check the number, it had been withheld. What had I landed myself in, I wondered? I went home to deal with my 19th-century French meal.

The rich men, they know about suffering That comes from natural things, the fate that Rich men say they can't control, the swell of The tides, the erosion of polar caps And the eruption of a terrible Greed among those who cease to be content With what they lack when faced with wealth they are Too ignorant to understand. Such wealth Is the price of progress. The fishmonger Sees the dread on the faces of the trout And mackerel laid out at the market Stall on quickly melting ice. In Pompeii The lava flowed and buried the people So poems such as this could be born.

A fly wounds the water but the wound soon heals. Swallows tilt and twitter overhead, dropping now and then toward the outward-radiating evidence of food. The green haze on the trees changes into leaves, and what looks like smoke floating over the neighbor’s barn is only apple blossoms. But sometimes what looks like disaster is disaster: the day comes at last, and the men struggle with the casket just clearing the pews.