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If honor to an ancient name be due, Or riches challenge it for one that’s new, The British language claims in either sense Both for its age, and for its opulence. But all great things must be from us removed, To be with higher reverence beloved. So landskips which in prospects distant lie, With greater wonder draw the pleasèd eye. Is not great Troy to one dark ruin hurled? Once the fam’d scene of all fighting world. Where’s Athens now, to whom Rome learning owes, And the safe laurels that adorned her brows? A strange reverse of fate she did endure, Never once greater, than she’s now obscure. Even Rome her self can but some footsteps show Of Scipio’s times, or those of Cicero. And as the Roman and the Grecian state, The British fell, the spoil of time and fate. But though the language hath the beauty lost, Yet she has still some great remains to boast. For ’twas in that, the sacred bards of old, In deathless numbers did their thoughts unfold. In groves, by rivers, and on fertile plains, They civilized and taught the listening swains; Whilst with high raptures, and as great success, Virtue they clothed in music’s charming dress. This Merlin spoke, who in his gloomy cave, Even Destiny her self seemed to enslave. For to his sight the future time was known, Much better than to others is their own; And with such state, predictions from him fell, As if he did decree, and not foretell. This spoke King Arthur, who, if fame be true, Could have compelled mankind to speak it too. In this once Boadicca valor taught, And spoke more nobly than her soldiers fought: Tell me what hero could be more than she, Who fell at once for fame and liberty? Nor could a greater sacrifice belong, Or to her children’s, or her country’s wrong. This spoke Caractacus, who was so brave, That to the Roman fortune check he gave: And when their yoke he could decline no more, He it so decently and nobly wore, That Rome her self with blushes did believe, A Britain would the law of honor give; And hastily his chains away she threw, Lest her own captive else should her subdue.

To love is to tell the story of the world.     There was an ocean with a boat     mountains     a meadow     too painful to stare at directly. Haven’t I been here before? Yes.     No:     not quite here. “It is not as if,” the philosopher writes, “an I exists independently over here and then simply loses a you over there.” In the mist, a man rigs the Suzelle, little red boat. Loved labored for months, learning to tie the right knot. The exact and only knot that will keep the vessel tethered. She rehearsed for the worst possible thing. “The attachment to you,” it is written, “is part of what composes who I am.” I know/knew those hands, hers. I watched her dust the sourdough with flour at midnight a moon between her fingers.     Gone went Loved. But the half-world of her in me was me.     It was lit by the moon.

I ran into the afterlife. No fluffy white clouds. Not even stars. Only sky dark as the inside of a movie theater at three in the afternoon and getting bigger all the time, expanding at terrific speed over the car which was disappearing, flattening out empty as the fields on either side. It was impossible to think under that rain louder than engines. I turned off the radio to listen, let my head fill up until every bone was vibrating—sky. Twice, trees of lightning broke out of the asphalt. I could smell the highway burning. Long after, saw blue smoke twirling behind the eyeballs, lariats doing fancy rope tricks, jerking silver dollars out of the air, along with billiard cues, ninepins. I was starting to feel I could drive forever when suddenly one of those trees was right in front of me. Of course, I hit it— branches shooting stars down the windshield, poor car shaking like a dazed cow. I thought this time for sure I was dead so whatever was on the other side had to be eternity. Saw sky enormous as nowhere. Kept on driving.

My Dear Conflicted Reader, If you will grant me that most of us have an equivocal nature, and that when we waken we have not made up our minds which direc- tion we're headed; so that—you might see a man driving to work in a perfume- and dye-free shirt, and a woman with an overdone tan hold up an orange flag in one hand, a Virginia Slim in the other—as if this were their predestination. Grant me that both of them were likely contemplat- ing a different scheme of things. WHERE DO YOU WANT TO SPEND ETERNITY the church marquee demands on the way to my boy's school, SMOKING OR NON-SMOKING. I admit I had not thought of where or which direction in exactly those terms. The radio ministry says g-o-d has a wrong-answer button and we are all waiting for it to go off... Count your grey hairs Count your chigger bites Count your pills Count the times the phone rings Count your T cells Count your mosquito bites Count the days since your last menses Count the chickens you've eaten Count your cankers Count the storm candles Count your stitches Count your broken bones Count the flies you killed before noon

id Two ids walk into one body & fight over whether to break melon on the kitchen counter & eat it by the fistful or to throw the melon out a shut window & watch it break on the pavement, stabbed by shards of glass. ego Sorry, for yelling through the speaker at the McDonald’s drive thru. Sorry, for not letting you through the door first. Sorry, I ate the dozen donuts in fifteen minutes over the sink. Sorry, I sound shrill, sound dumb, sound ditzy, sound spacey. Sorry, mom. I mean, mamá. 
I mean, miss. I mean, nevermind. superego Dear body: Cut the melon into slices with the sharpest knife you can find & enjoy the pain you are causing this melon. Stop saying you’re sorry, instead feel guilty for being shrill, being dumb, being ditzy, 
being spacey. Feel guilty because your mom is your mamá is your miss is the one who is guilty for giving you this body with two ids, 
& one ego, & one superego who hush-hushes you whole.

Recalcitrant elephants begin to attack. The angry young males of murdered mothers. Any Martian could see it how we did it The historian of   the future is amazed. So much feeling once in so many bodies. But maybe they were different didn’t think or feel that much

The Seneca carry stories in satchels. They are made of  pounded corn and a grandmother’s throat. The right boy will approach the dampness of a forest with a sling, a modest twining wreath for the bodies of  birds. A liquid eye. When ruffed from leaves, the breath of  flight is dissolute. What else, the moment of  weightlessness before a great plunge? In a lost place, a stone will find the boy. Give me your birds, she will say, and I will tell you a story. A stone, too, admits hunger. The boy is willing. Loses all his beaks. What necklace will his grandmother make now. The sun has given the stone a mouth. With it, she sings of what has been lost. She sings and sings and sings. The boy listens, forgets, remembers. Becomes distracted. The necklace will be heavy, impossible to wear.

One morn I left him in his bed; A moment after some one said, ‘Your child is dying – he is dead.’ We made him ready for his rest, Flowers in his hair, and on his breast His little hands together prest. We sailed by night across the sea; So, floating from the world were we, Apart from sympathy, we Three. The wild sea moaned, the black clouds spread Moving shadows on its bed, But one of us lay midship dead. I saw his coffin sliding down The yellow sand in yonder town, Where I put on my sorrow’s crown. And we returned; in this drear place Never to see him face to face, I thrust aside the living race. Mothers, who mourn with me today, Oh, understand me, when I say, I cannot weep, I cannot pray; I gaze upon a hidden store, His books, his toys, the clothes he wore, And cry, ‘Once more, to me,once more!’ Then take, from me, this simple verse, That you may know what I rehearse— A grief – your and my Universe!

This afternoon the park is filled with brides. Among varieties of persuasion the big trees turn back toward the forest. Adventurers gather in side streets. The police are looking hard at the sky. Down at the bay, boys trapped in solitude fish. Girls hike their pants and stare at the wave line, remembering secrets they once held dear. The day offers a ridiculous variation as an excuse for not coming in on time. Wild imaginings take the place of religion. Someone who can't swim offers to cook. We've devised a means for the obstinate children to be fed, she says, but no one understands this. We crave affection, but give only advice. There are walls topped with broken bicycles. Someone makes an obscene offer and this is the best we get all day. Oh don't give in so easily she says, handing over the keys. We climb the blue fire escape. We would like to keep going, skyline climbers, old men remembering their childhood who devise a few illegal experiences no one wants to try. It gets to be more than the officers can take. The park is dusty, dark, yet the children, ignored all day, play on, convinced their dedication releases a magic that changes everything.

One sung of thee who left the tale untold, Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting; Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold, Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.