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I.1. Awake, Æolian lyre, awake, And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. From Helicon's harmonious springs A thousand rills their mazy progress take: The laughing flowers, that round them blow, Drink life and fragrance as they flow. Now the rich stream of music winds along Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign: Now rolling down the steep amain, Headlong, impetuous, see it pour: The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar. I.2. Oh! Sovereign of the willing soul, Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares And frantic Passions hear thy soft control. On Thracia's hills the Lord of War, Has curb'd the fury of his car, And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command. Perching on the sceptred hand Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king With ruffled plumes and flagging wing: Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie The terror of his beak, and light'nings of his eye. I.3. Thee the voice, the dance, obey, Temper'd to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day With antic Sports and blue-ey'd Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare: Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay. With arms sublime, that float upon the air, In gliding state she wins her easy way: O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love. II.1. Man's feeble race what ills await, Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain, Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate! The fond complaint, my song, disprove, And justify the laws of Jove. Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse? Night, and all her sickly dews, Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, He gives to range the dreary sky: Till down the eastern cliffs afar Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts of war. II.2. In climes beyond the solar road, Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom To cheer the shiv'ring native's dull abode. And oft, beneath the od'rous shade Of Chili's boundless forests laid, She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat In loose numbers wildly sweet Their feather-cinctur'd chiefs, and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous Shame, Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame. II.3. Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep, Isles, that crown th' Ægean deep, Fields, that cool Ilissus laves, Or where Mæander's amber waves In ling'ring Lab'rinths creep, How do your tuneful echoes languish, Mute, but to the voice of Anguish? Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breath'd around: Ev'ry shade and hallow'd Fountain Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast. III.1. Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid, What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, To him the mighty Mother did unveil Her awful face: the dauntless child Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled. This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year: Thine too these golden keys, immortal boy! This can unlock the gates of Joy; Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears, Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears. III.2. Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, The secrets of th' Abyss to spy. He pass'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time: The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble, while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Clos'd his eyes in endless night. Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car, Wide o'er the fields of Glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace. III.3. Hark, his hands thy lyre explore! Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er Scatters from her pictur'd urn Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. But ah! 'tis heard no more— O lyre divine, what daring spirit Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, That the Theban Eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Thro' the azure deep of air: Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the Sun: Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, Beneath the good how far—but far above the great.

Where once I loved my flesh, That social fellow, Now I want security of bone And cherish the silence of my skeleton. Where once I walked the world Hunting the devil, Now I find the darkness and the void Within my side. First to be good, then to be happy I Worked and prayed. Before the midnight, like the foul fiend, I killed my dear friend. Hope unto hope, dream beyond monstrous dream I sought the world. Now, at the black pitch and midnight of despair, I find it was always here.

When one isn’t enough, you need two when two aren’t enough, you need four with four the progression begins, moving toward a number that schoolteachers will call absurd. Question: How many men do you need to put up a house? Answer: You need absurd men when one isn’t enough and two can’t do the work of One. And how much money should we give these men to compensate them? You need absurd coins when one coin sliced in half and handed out isn’t enough. And how many words do you need to transform them? Absurd and absurd and absurd words when silence isn’t enough. This is what they call progression: Absurd men aren’t enough for putting up the house, absurd coins don’t make them happy absurd words can’t dissuade them.

We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you For being one of the generous few who've promised To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them. Now we'd like to give you the opportunity To step out far in front of the other donors By acting a little sooner than you expected, Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you're scheduled To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients Are waiting this very minute in intensive care Who will likely die before another liver And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years, Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain Of these patients might total more than a century. To you, of course, one year of your life means more Than six of theirs, but to no one else, No one as concerned with the general welfare As you've claimed to be. As for your poems— The few you may have it in you to finish— Even if we don't judge them by those you've written, Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough, It's doubtful they'll raise one Lazarus from a grave Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed To work six wonders. As for the gaps you'll leave As an aging bachelor in the life of friends, They'll close far sooner than the open wounds Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives, Parents and children, by the death of the six Who now are failing. Just imagine how grateful They'll all be when they hear of your grand gesture. Summer and winter they'll visit your grave, in shifts, For as long as they live, and stoop to tend it, And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths, While your friends, who are just as forgetful As you are, just as liable to be distracted, Will do no more than a makeshift job of upkeep. If the people you'll see tomorrow pacing the halls Of our crowded facility don't move you enough, They'll make you at least uneasy. No happy future Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience Will ask him to certify every hour from now on Six times as full as it was before, your work Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods Six times as restorative as anyone else's. Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life Under this crushing burden when, with a single word, You could be a god, one of the few gods Who, when called on, really listens?

Oh, yes, the rain is sorry. Unfemale, of course, the rain is with her painted face still plain and with such pixel you’d never see it in the pure freckling, the lacquer of her. The world is lighter with her recklessness, a handkerchief so wet it is clear. To you. My withered place, this frumpy home (nearer to the body than to evening) miserable beloved. I lie tender and devout with insomnia, perfect on the center pillow past midnight, sick with the thought of another year of waking, solved and happy, it has never been this way! Believe strangers who say the end is close for what could be closer? You are my stranger and see how we have closed. On both ends. Night wets me all night, blind, carried. And watermarks. The plough of the rough on the slick, love, a tendency toward fever. To break. To soil. Would I dance with you? Both forever and rather die. It would be like dying, yes. Yes I would. I have loved the slaking of your forgetters, your indifferent hands on my loosening. Through a thousand panes of glass not all transparent, and the temperature. I felt that. What you say is not less than that.

[Let a be taken as . . .] a liquid line beneath the skin and b where the blue tiles meet body and the body’s bridge a seeming road here, endless rain pearling light chamber after chamber of dust-weighted air the project of seeing things so to speak, or things seen namely a hand, namely the logic of the hand holding a bell or clouded lens the vase perched impossibly near the edge obscuring the metal tines. She said “perhaps” then it echoed. I stood there torn felt hat in hand wondering what I had done to cause this dizziness “you must learn to live with.” It reveals no identifiable source (not anyway the same as a forest floor). A vagrant march time, car passes silently, arm rests at his side holding a bell or ground lens where c stands for inessential night – how that body would move vs how it actually does – too abstract &/or not abstract enough but a closed curve in either case she might repeat indicating the shallow eaves nothing but coats and scarves below the window his-her face canted to the left nothing imagined or imaginable dark and nothing actually begun so that the color becomes exactly as it was in the miniuscule word for it scribbled beside an arrow on the far wall perfectly how else continuous with memory. There are pomegranates on the table though they have been placed there salt, pepper, books and schedules all sharing the same error and measure of inattention. What she says rolls forward. I shouted toward motion, other gestured, child laughs, sky, traffic, photograph. I gave a real pain, expelled breath, decided. Both arms in thought, mirror otherwise, abandoned structures mostly, the glass door with its inscription lay open before us, nothing to fear.

When my lover became my enemy I made my bed amongst winds and drove the old road ’till my heart crashed. Where’s the bypass? Washing my shirts, wringing them out. Hung in the breeze. Water skips undressed over outcrops. What it says is. Wind, roots in rock. Lying on Long Tongue, sun diffused in mist. Easy sleep without waking. Edge of displaced echoes air around and sound of  bird and ’plane A swallow’s glittering chitter.

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings, Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun, For my mean Pen are too superior things; Or how they all, or each their dates have run, Let Poets and Historians set these forth. My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart Great Bartas’ sugar’d lines do but read o’er, Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part ‘Twixt him and me that over-fluent store. A Bartas can do what a Bartas will But simple I according to my skill. From School-boy’s tongue no Rhet’ric we expect, Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings, Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect. My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, ‘Cause Nature made it so irreparable. Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek Who lisp’d at first, in future times speak plain. By Art he gladly found what he did seek, A full requital of his striving pain. Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure: A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits. A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits. If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance. But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine And poesy made Calliope’s own child? So ‘mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine, But this weak knot they will full soon untie. The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie. Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are. Men have precedency and still excel; It is but vain unjustly to wage war. Men can do best, and Women know it well. Preeminence in all and each is yours; Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays. This mean and unrefined ore of mine Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine.

They darken. In the sky over Florence, the oblong clouds swell and darken. And hailstones lift back through the updrafts, thickening, darkening, until, swollen as bird eggs, they drop to the cobbled streets. Horses! the child Galileo thinks, then peeks through the doorway to the shock of ten thousand icy hooves. At his back, his father is tuning violins, and because there is nothing sharper at hand Galileo saws through a captured hailstone with a length of E-string, the white globe opening slowly, and the pattern inside already bleeding its frail borders. Layers and layers of ice— Like what? Onion pulp? Cypress rings? If only the room were colder, and the eye finer. If only the hand were faster, and the blade sharper, and firmer, and without a hint of song . . .

Though each single life occurs in a series of occasions striking only by what blurry context precedes them So come to know what I should have wanted to say—from