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Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home: Under the shadow of thy throne Thy saints have dwelt secure; Sufficient is thine arm alone, And our defense is sure. Before the hills in order stood Or earth received her frame, From everlasting thou art God, To endless years the same. Thy word commands our flesh to dust, “Return, ye sons of men”; All nations rose from earth at first, And turn to earth again. A thousand ages in thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun. The busy tribes of flesh and blood, With all their lives and cares, Are carried downwards by thy flood, And lost in following years. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day. Like flowery fields the nations stand, Pleased with the morning light; The flowers beneath the mower’s hand Lie withering e’er ’tis night. Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Be thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home.

Our grandma kissed a pumpkin on a Friday afternoon. She also kissed a crayon and a giant red balloon. I saw her kiss a chipmunk eating cookies with a queen. She kissed us in these costumes at our house on Halloween!

Our hired girl, she's 'Lizabuth Ann; An' she can cook best things to eat! She ist puts dough in our pie-pan, An' pours in somepin' 'at's good an' sweet; An' nen she salts it all on top With cinnamon; an' nen she'll stop An' stoop an' slide it, ist as slow, In th' old cook-stove, so's 'twon't slop An' git all spilled; nen bakes it, so It's custard-pie, first thing you know! An' nen she'll say, "Clear out o' my way! They's time fer work, an' time fer play! Take yer dough, an' run, child, run! Er I cain't git no cookin' done!" When our hired girl 'tends like she's mad, An' says folks got to walk the chalk When she's around, er wisht they had! I play out on our porch an' talk To Th' Raggedy Man 'at mows our lawn; An' he says, "Whew!" an' nen leans on His old crook-scythe, and blinks his eyes, An' sniffs all 'round an' says, "I swawn! Ef my old nose don't tell me lies, It 'pears like I smell custard-pies!" An' nen he'll say, "Clear out o' my way! They's time fer work, an' time fer play! Take yer dough, an' run, child, run! Er she cain't git no cookin' done!" Wunst our hired girl, when she Got the supper, an' we all et, An' it wuz night, an' Ma an' me An' Pa went wher' the "Social" met,— An' nen when we come home, an' see A light in the kitchen door, an' we Heerd a maccordeun, Pa says, "Lan'- O'-Gracious! who can her beau be?" An' I marched in, an' 'Lizabuth Ann Wuz parchin' corn fer The Raggedy Man! Better say, "Clear out o' the way! They's time fer work, an' time fer play! Take the hint, an' run, child, run! Er we cain't git no courtin' done!"

In this world hacked from marrowed dust, the half-breed assassin slays men before they breed to corps, He belts his innard song. He travels to a sapling town where sawyers hew logs to songs of plovers, and mansadors tame broncs of the blackest, lustiest blood. Soon the town blooms to terror, and fades before it booms. Ghosts weed out of bodies with their sharp imagined hands. A hobbled miner, delirious from the sun, feels the shadow of his innard song, and croaks: I’m a buck nun failure anyway. The half-breed leaves him be, rides to a town of tents wooled with alfalfa and glass-needled rain shatters the dusted tundra.

The burnt church up the street yawns to the sky, its empty windows edged in soot, its portals boarded up and slathered with graffiti, oily layers, urgent but illegible. All that can be plundered has been, all but the carapace—the hollow bell tower, the fieldstone box that once served as a nave. The tidy row of homes that line this block have tended lawns and scalloped bathtub shrines. Each front porch holds a chair where no one sits. Those who live here triple lock their doors day and night. Some mornings they step out to find a smoking car stripped to its skeleton abandoned at the curb. Most afternoons the street is still but for a mourning dove and gangs of pigeons picking through the grass. Our Lady of Perpetual Help is gray, a dead incisor in a wary smile. A crevice in her wall allows a glimpse into the chancel, where a sodden mattress and dirty blanket indicate that someone finds this place a sanctuary still, takes his rest here, held and held apart from passers by, their cruelties and their kindnesses, watched over by the night’s blind congregation, by the blank eyes of a concrete saint.

Maybe all losses before this one are practice: maybe all grief that comes after her death seems tame. I wish I knew how to make dying simple, wish our mother’s last week were not constructed of clear plastic tubing, IVs, oxygen hiss, cough medicine, morphine patches, radiation tattoos, the useless burn on her chest. I’m still the incurable optimist, she whispers, you’re still the eternal pessimist. My sister sleeps on a sofa; our brother, exhausted, rolls up in a blanket on the hard floor. Curled in a rented white bed, our mother’s body races to catch up with her driven, nomadic soul. Those nights alone, foster care, empty beer bottles taught us she was always already vanishing.

Untitled, from the Silueta series, 1980, by Ana Mendieta has appeared to the mountain dwellers, her grief  engraved where stone softens to clay. Keep your eyes sharp for a dagger. In its hilt, you’ll find her face pressed to the earth’s cheek. Kiss this sacred spot before the rains wash it away like her orphaned feet. Notched heart cradles a planet heavy with night- mares flying into empty mouths. Listen for their thirsty murmurs. She’ll push her ponderous child into the dew of  a San Felipe dawn, name him Salvador. They’ll rest beneath a web spun umbilical, eclipsed from our human eyes. • Our Lady stone             clay earth rain orphaned heart eclipsed

I. Riverside Drive, 1929 “ ‘Good-by, Ralph. It should end some other way. Not this,’ Corinna said. ‘Now go away.’ No. Rhymes. It’s ludicrous. Try ‘Dear, good-by.’ No. Repetitious. Maybe ‘Dear, farewell.’ No. Stagy. Out of character. Oh, hell. Time for a drink.” The Smith-Corona heaves As he retracts his knickerbockered knees To rise. Outside, a southbound tug receives The sun broadside, and the bold Linit sign Pales on the Jersey shore. Fresh gin, tk-tk- Tk-tk-tk-tk, quite clearly fills his glass Half full from the unlabelled bottle. Now His boyish fingers grip the siphon’s worn Wire basketweave and press the trigger down To utter soda water. One long sip Subtracts a third of it for carrying. On the way back, he pauses at the door Beside his football picture, where a snore Attests that all is well and promises Him time to work. To work: before the tall, Black, idle typewriter, before the small Black type elitely inching on the blank White sea of bond, he quails and takes a drink. First, demolitions: the slant shilling mark Defaces half a hundred characters With killing strike-overs. Now, a new start: “ ‘Good-by, Ralph. I don’t know why it should end Like tihs,’ Corinna said. ‘But be my friend.’ ’’ II. Hotel Shawmut, Boston, 1946 (From a commercial travellers’ hotel, Professor S. jumped straight down into hell, While—jug-o’-rum-rum—engines made their way Beneath him, one so cold December day). While he prepares his body, cold gears mate And chuckle in the long draught of the street. He shaves; his silver spectacles peruse An issue of The North American Muse. He uses Mum; outside him in the hall, Maids talk their language; snow begins to fall. He puts on his old clothes. The narrow room Has nothing, nothing to discuss with him Except what time you should send out your suit And shoes for cleaning. Now he stamps his foot: Outside the window, not saying anything, Appears a seagull, standing on one wing; A long-awaited colleague. With glad cry, Professor S. embraces the white sky. While S. demolishes a taxicab, His spectacles review the life of Crabbe. (From a commercial travellers’ hotel, Profesor S. descended into hell. But once in April in New Haven he Kissed a friend’s sister in the gloom of trees.) III. Deus Ex Machina, Flushing, 1966 La Guardia. Knee-deep in storyboards, I line up for the shuttle, which arrives Outside the gate and off-loads shuffling streams Of transferees—each in his uniform Of sober stuff and nonsense, with a case Of talents at his side—who pass our line Of somber-suited shuttlers carrying Our cases on. Then one appears, a rare Bird in migration to New York, a bare- Crowned singer of the stony coast of Maine, And of Third Avenue in rain; a bard. The way of the almost-extinct is hard. He peers through tortoise-shelly glasses at The crowd, the place, the year. He is not here And is. In his check jacket, he describes An arc of back and arms as he proceeds Between two city starlings, carrying His store of songs in a beat leather grip And a dried drop of his brown lamb’s blood on His wilted collar. A Time-reader in Glenurquhart plaid identifies his bird— “Godwit, the poet”—to a flannel friend. The bard stalks on on his two legs, aware He has been spotted; in, I’d say, some pain At an existence which anticipates Its end and in the meantime tolerates Intolerance of the wing, the whim, the one Unanswerable voice which sings alone. IV. Lament of the Makers, Including Me: 1967 New-minted coin, my poet’s mask (A small denomination in Demotic nickel, brass, or tin) Passes from hand to hand to hand Beyond my six acres of land. Did I desire such currency Among the meritocracy Of tri-named ladies who preserve The flame of art in mackled hands, Of universitarians And decimal librarians Who shore and store up textual Addenda, of asexual Old arbiters and referees Who startle letters with a sneeze, Of critics whose incautious cough Halts a new wave or sends it off To break on uninhabited shores, Of publishers, insensual bores Procuring art—“A maidenhead!”— To Jack the Reader, of well-read Young underfaced admirers who Impinge on undefended you At readings in all colleges? No, I did not; but knowledge is All-powerless to seek redress From injuries to innocence. I think continually of Abjurers, who, fed on self-love, Housed in an incommodious cave, Clothed in three-button sackcloth, crave Indulgence of no audience But their own laudatory ears. Alack, this anchoritic few Dwindles; these ticking times are too Struck with celebrity’s arrears, And heap past-due advances on The embryonic artisan; All hours from dawn to night are lauds, All auditors are all applause (However electronic), all Tempters conspire in Adam’s fall. The world turned upside-down, without A beast in view, without a doubt, Recalls its exiles and bestows On them the palm, the bays, the rose (Art sick?), the Laurel Wormser Prize, Whose debased dollar only buys More nods, more goods, more fame, more praise: Not art, as in the rude old days. Now worldward poets turn and say, Timor vitae conturbat me.

rocket water eglantine wooden moon on the roof signs of night & the red motorbike's bleeding muscle fleshed stalk dripping and overgrowing our evening it too a sign of darkness a leek's fat body the red motorbike our night fire ravishment of chrome steel our red motorbike glazed with henna and betel it squirts salmon  juice between the dark of our thighs it sprouts and shouts at the bar it wears a portion of evening in its eye it sloughs off sleep like the bushes drop resin & berries our rags dip purring in even redder roar our muscles softly skip sweet sweat flickers we polish carefully & assiduously our eyes are perched on steel antennae surely there is nothing redder than our motorbike steed we will live on it our red tent dig our claws into its heart cherries meat it shouts out spittle rip the juice instructs the eyes in the language of iron the red night squats pressed against our motorbike we ride hunting little girls in the wooden sky

Every family that lived in our court had an American truck with a union sticker on the back and as a kid I admired them the way I thought our soldiers must have admired Patton and Sherman tanks. You once told me that the Russians couldn’t take us, not with towns like ours full of iron, full of workers tempered by the fires of foundries and mills. It wasn’t the Russians that came; it was the contract, the strike, the rounds of layoffs that blistered until your number was called. I still remember you loading up to leave for the last time, the union sticker scraped off with a putty knife, the end of the white tarp draped over your truck bed flapping as you drove away.