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Some people say prison is the country where life is cheaper than anywhere else

Soon the glass angel must be Wrapped and packed and put away, And this hard year swept out Like tinsel from the Christmas tree— The end of December, aromatic In its homely smoke, and the thin limbs Of maple and ash, the pipecleaner pines, Brushing themselves against The cold carbons of evening. I've watched the ice turn Little knifeblades in the grass. Sly beneath them, the mole Knows what to do with dirt— Shoulder it aside, crumb by claw, And build a city deep, A labyrinth of dark Under the stone and the root. I think I could live there. I think I could make A music of my own. Thinking Makes a music of its own. You can hear it when Some stray phrase stumbles down The rabbit hole, a few words That broke from the brain And won't go back, always One step ahead of the real. But what's in the way To the way in? God, That desperate explanation, Mentor and tormentor, giving us The duties of paradise, Obligations of the saved? And is my way in This abyss of the belly, where they Tied the first knot in my life? Even the virgin must have felt The postpartum blues, crazy enough To pin sweet curls in her hair, Shavings she picked up from The floor of the carpenter's shop. I think I can still hear The baby wailing. Or is that cry The dead beating on their graves For the earth to open— And to let them out, or to let us in?

When you asked if it rained bees or poison you were asking the wrong question. Again. You still didn’t understand the difference between hurricanes and flooding. Thus between gods and humans. Between your slum- lordy digs and the shacks I pass that cling to old boards and huddle around each family. The yards marking the care of home. Everywhere something is falling on someone and I watch like an autumn tourist tripping through the Berkshires. I reach to catch a leaf. I try to straighten a Pisa-like sapling. The wind wraps around us both like a question mark and leaves me standing, the sole witness on this end. I’m telling you about a place of silence. You want it all to be a metaphor. I’m watching a front porch crumble. Still, someone sits there.

Of like importance is the posture too, In which the genial feat of Love we do: For as the females of the four foot kind, Receive the leapings of their Males behind; So the good Wives, with loins uplifted high, And leaning on their hands the fruitful stroke may try: For in that posture will they best conceive: Not when supinely laid they frisk and heave; For active motions only break the blow, And more of Strumpets than of Wives they show; When answering stroke with stroke, the mingled liquors flow. Endearments eager, and too brisk a bound, Throws off the Plow-share from the furrow’d ground. But common Harlots in conjunction heave, Because ’tis less their business to conceive Than to delight, and to provoke the deed; A trick which honest Wives but little need.

“Press out an opiate juice From berries culled in prick of June-time heat; Pound nettles in a cruse Of crimson sard till mixing is complete; And strain the brew through bags of sarcenet, Mumbling the runes that crazed Sir Dagonet.” So spoke the slobbering witch, Wagging her shaky head incessantly; Then, with an agile twitch Stove oddly crackling through the briery. I caught the swish of her broomstick up to the moon, And her tattered skirt afloat like a black balloon. Old Witch, whither art gone? Hopped off to the well like Chick-o’-my-Craney-Crow? Here’s work for thy dudgeon, A brew and a bake for a devilish calico! What’s but a kettle ready for mad ferment, Black mouth a-grin at me, the innocent! I pressed and pounded duly, And sat to watch the slop at bubble slow; Fed coals with knots unruly Of thornbush boles till pot-legs stood aglow. And thrice the pot gave forth a piggish grunt, And thrice a bellowing as of hounds on hunt. A great red swine sprang out, With bristling gleams as bright as Freyr’s boar; Then, at his grubbing snout, Two black dogs leaped, two white-fanged lusts for gore. They three made hideous noise through brush and dew— Trembling I stooped and strained the mulling brew. And there was born a girl Within a sudden mist wizardry, And came some faint pipes’ thirl, While she danced, with lips turned sly, and beckoned me, And we danced mad till night’s low-burning wick Snuffed out, hearing like us the Old Hag’s stick.

A pot poured out Fulfills its spout

I set up my computer and webcam in the kitchen so I can ask my mother’s and aunt’s advice as I cook soup for the first time alone. My mother is in Utah. My aunt is in Hungary. I show the onions to my mother with the webcam. “Cut them smaller,” she advises. “You only need a taste.” I chop potatoes as the onions fry in my pan. When I say I have no paprika to add to the broth, they argue whether it can be called potato soup. My mother says it will be white potato soup, my aunt says potato soup must be red. When I add sliced peppers, I ask many times if I should put the water in now, but they both say to wait until I add the potatoes. I add Polish sausage because I can’t find Hungarian, and I cook it so long the potatoes fall apart. “You’ve made stew,” my mother says when I hold up the whole pot to the camera. They laugh and say I must get married soon. I turn off the computer and eat alone.

An aging house, well yes he understands that—but suddenly down it falls. And he is in a garden. And there are animals. And he is in a garden and there are trees. And there are stones on fire. And, well, he walks up and down on them. But this is the Hebrew and, not a conjunction, merely some un- translatable particle. Cenotaph (there is no body here). (Somehow I can’t imagine digging a separate grave for the heart.) And everything is cast down—plants, animals, garden, stones, fire, Tyre with its river called Litany—along with himself. The living organism, he hears, is a symbol of the psyche. Thinking is inward seeing. So Wittgenstein thought, and also Swedenborg. Die, well yes he knows he has to, but thinks of it as being killed—or killing. As if at a distance—he lives, not in life, but across from it. And it comes to pass. And he tries to distinguish life and its contents. And they wheel around him, the cars, as if he were standing still.

A moral tale, for Sauternes, the fungus cenaria , and the wild old Never prophesy. You can’t. So don’t try. Lust, pride, and lethargy may cause us misery or bliss. The meanest mistake has a point to make. Hear this — what his vintner d’Eyquem said once the lord d’Eyquem was dead: “The wine that year promised bad or none. He’d let it go too late. Rot had crawled through all the vines, greasy scum on every cluster dangling at the crotches of the leaves. Should have been long picked but he’d said, ‘No. Wait for me,’ off to wait on a new woman, grapes on the verge of ripe when he left. Coupling kept him till rot wrapped the grapes like lace & by the time she’d kicked him out the sun had got them, they hung shriveled in the blast. Well, he rode home cocky & bullied the grapes into the vats rot & all, spoiled grapes, too old, too soon squeezed dry. The wine makes. The wine makes thick, gold-colored, & pours like honey. We try it. Fantastic! not like honey, punchy, you’ve never drunk anything like it — refreshing, in a rush over a heat that slows your throat — wanting to keep that flavor stuck to the edge of your tongue where your taste is, keep it like the best bouquet you can remember of sundown summer & someone coming to you smiling. The taste has odor like a new country, so fine at first you can’t take it in it’s so strange. It’s beautiful & believe me you love to go slow.” moral: Age is not all dry rot. It’s never too late. Sweet is your real estate.

I saw an old cottage of clay, And only of mud was the floor; It was all falling into decay, And the snow drifted in at the door. Yet there a poor family dwelt, In a hovel so dismal and rude; And though gnawing hunger they felt, They had not a morsel of food. The children were crying for bread, And to their poor mother they’d run; ‘Oh, give us some breakfast,’ they said, Alas! their poor mother had none. She viewed them with looks of despair, She said (and I’m sure it was true), ‘’Tis not for myself that I care, But, my poor little children, for you.’ O then, let the wealthy and gay But see such a hovel as this, That in a poor cottage of clay They may know what true misery is. And what I may have to bestow I never will squander away, While many poor people I know Around me are wretched as they.