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We have gone out in boats upon the sea at night, lost, and the vast waters close traps of fear about us. The boats are driven apart, and we are alone at last under the incalculable sky, listless, diseased with stars. Let the oars be idle, my love, and forget at this time our love like a knife between us defining the boundaries that we can never cross nor destroy as we drift into the heart of our dream, cutting the silence, slyly, the bitter rain in our mouths and the dark wound closed in behind us. Forget depth-bombs, death and promises we made, gardens laid waste, and, over the wastelands westward, the rooms where we had come together bombd. But even as we leave, your love turns back. I feel your absence like the ringing of bells silenced. And salt over your eyes and the scales of salt between us. Now, you pass with ease into the destructive world. There is a dry crash of cement. The light fails, falls into the ruins of cities upon the distant shore and within the indestructible night I am alone.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Passage O soul to India! Eclaircise Eclaircise elucidate the myths Asiatic, the primitive fables. Not you alone, proud truths of the world, Nor you alone, ye facts of modern science, But myths and fables of eld eld old times , Asia’s, Africa’s fables, The far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams, The deep diving bibles and legends, The daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; O you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun! O you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled pinnacled a small, ornamental turret on top of a building or tower, usually resembling a pyramid or cone. , red as roses, burnish’d with gold! Towers of fables immortal, fashion’d from mortal dreams! You too I welcome, and fully, the same as the rest! You too with joy I sing. Passage to India! Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? The earth to be spann’d, connected by network, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together. A worship new I sing, You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, You, not for trade or transportation only, But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul.

I. Until Jove let it be, no colonist Mastered the wild earth; no land was marked, None parceled out or shared; but everyone Looked for his living in the common world. And Jove gave poison to the blacksnakes, and Made the wolves ravage, made the ocean roll, Knocked honey from the leaves, took fire away— So man might beat out various inventions By reasoning and art. First he chipped fire Out of the veins of flint where it was hidden; Then rivers felt his skiffs of the light alder; Then sailors counted up the stars and named them: Pleiades, Hyades, and the Pole Star; Then were discovered ways to take wild things. In snares, or hunt them with the circling pack; And how to whip a stream with casting nets, Or draw the deep-sea fisherman’s cordage up; And then the use of steel and the shrieking saw; Then various crafts. All things were overcome By labor and by force of bitter need. II. Even when your threshing floor is leveled By the big roller, smoothed and packed by hand With potter’s clay, so that it will not crack, There are still nuisances. The tiny mouse Locates his house and granary underground, Or the blind mole tunnels his dark chamber; The toad, too, and all monsters of the earth, Besides those plunderers of the grain, the weevil And frantic ant, scared of a poor old age. Let me speak then, too, of the farmer’s weapons: The heavy oaken plow and the plowshare, The slowly rolling carts of Demeter, The threshing machine, the sledge, the weighted mattock, The withe baskets, the cheap furniture, The harrow and the magic winnowing fan— All that your foresight makes provision of, If you still favor the divine countryside. III. Moreover, like men tempted by the straits In ships borne homeward through the blowing sea, We too must reckon on Arcturus star, The days of luminous Draco and the Kids. When Libra makes the hours of sleep and daylight Equal, dividing the world, half light, half dark, Then drive the team, and sow the field with barley, Even under intractable winter’s rain. But Spring is the time to sow your beans and clover, When shining Taurus opens the year with his golden Horns, and the Dog’s averted star declines; For greater harvests of your wheat and spelt, Let first the Pleiades and Hyades be hid And Ariadne’s diadem go down. The golden sun rules the great firmament Through the twelve constellations, and the world Is measured out in certain parts, and heaven By five great zones is taken up entire: One glowing with sundazzle and fierce heat; And far away on either side the arctics, Frozen with ice and rain, cerulean; And, in between, two zones for sick mankind: Through each of these a slanting path is cut Where pass in line the zodiacal stars. Northward the steep world rises to Scythia And south of Libya descends, where black Styx and the lowest of the dead look on. In the north sky the Snake glides like a river Winding about the Great and Little Bear— Those stars that fear forever the touch of ocean; Southward they say profound Night, mother of Furies, Sits tight-lipped among the crowding shades, Or thence Aurora draws the daylight back; And where the East exhales the yellow morning, Reddening evening lights her stars at last. IV. As for the winter, when the freezing rains Confine the farmer, he may employ himself In preparations for serener seasons. The plowman beats the plowshare on the forge, Or makes his vats of tree-trunks hollowed out, Brands his cattle, numbers his piles of grain, Sharpens fence posts or pitchforks, prepares Umbrian trellises for the slow vine. Then you may weave the baskets of bramble twigs Or dip your bleating flock in the clean stream. Often the farmer loads his little mule With olive oil or apples, and brings home A grindstone or a block of pitch from market. And some will stay up late beside the fire On winter nights, whittling torches, while The housewife runs the shuttle through the loom And comforts the long labor with her singing; Or at the stove she simmers the new wine, Skimming the froth with leaves. Oh idle time! In that hale season, all their worries past, Farmers arrange convivialities— As after laden ships have reached home port, The happy sailors load the prow with garlands. Then is the time to gather acorns and Laurel berries and the bloodred myrtle, To lay your traps for cranes and snares for buck, To hit the fallow deer with twisted slingshots, And track the long-eared hare— When snow is deep, and ice is on the rivers. V. What of the humors and the ways of Autumn? Just when the farmer wished to reap his yellow Fields, and thresh his grain, I have often seen all the winds make war, Flattening the stout crops from the very roots; And in the black whirlwind Carrying off the ears and the light straw. And often mighty phalanxes of rain Marched out of heaven, as the clouds Rolled up from the sea the detestable tempest; Then the steep aether thundered, and the deluge Soaked the crops, filled ditches, made the rivers Rise and roar and seethe in their spuming beds. The Father himself in the mid stormy night Lets the lightning go, at whose downstroke Enormous earth quivers, wild things flee, And fear abases the prone hearts of men— As Jove splits Athos with his firebolt Or Rhodopê or the Ceraunian ridge. The southwind wails in sheets of rain, And under that great wind the groves Lament, and the long breast of the shore is shaken. If you dislike to be so caught, mark well The moon’s phases and the weather signs; Notice where Saturn’s frigid star retires, Mercury’s wanderings over heaven; and revere Especially, the gods. Offer to Ceres Annual sacrifice and annual worship In the first fair weather of the spring, So may your sheep grow fat and your vines fruitful, Your sleep sweet and your mountains full of shade. Let all the country folk come to adore her, And offer her libations of milk and wine; Conduct the sacrificial lamb three times Around the ripe field, in processional, With all your chorus singing out to Ceres; And let no man lay scythe against his grain Unless he first bind oakleaves on his head And make his little dance, and sing to her. VI. When shall we herd the cattle to the stables? The wind, say, rises without intermission; The sea gets choppy and the swell increases; The dry crash of boughs is heard on hills; The long sound of the surf becomes a tumult; The gusts become more frequent in the grove; The waves begin to fight against the keels; From far at sea the gulls fly shoreward crying; The heron leaves his favorite marsh and soars Over the high cloud. Then you will see Beyond thin skimrack, shooting stars Falling, the long pale tracks behind them Whitening through the darkness of the night; And you’ll see straw and fallen leaves blowing. But when it thunders in rough Boreas’ quarter, When east and west it thunders—every sailor Furls his dripping sail. A storm should never catch you unprepared. Aerial cranes take flight before its rising, The restless heifer with dilated nostrils Sniffs the air; the squeaking hirondelle Flits round and round the lake, and frogs, Inveterate in their mud, croak a chorale. And too the ant, more frantic in his gallery, Trundles his eggs out from their hiding place; The rainbow, cloud imbiber, may be seen; And crows go cawing from the pasture In a harsh throng of crepitating wings; The jeering jay gives out his yell for rain And takes a walk by himself on the dry sand. Stormwise, the various sea-fowl, and such birds As grub the sweet Swan River in Asia, May be observed dousing themselves and diving Or riding on the water, as if they wished— What odd exhilaration—to bathe themselves. VII. After a storm, clear weather and continuing Sunny days may likewise be foretold: By the sharp twinkle of the stars, the moon Rising to face her brother’s rays by day; No tenuous fleeces blowing in the sky, No halcyons, sea favorites, on the shore Stretching out their wings in tepid sunlight; But mists go lower and lie on the fields, The owl, observing sundown from his perch, Modulates his meaningless melancholy. Aloft in crystal air the sparrow hawk Chases his prey; and as she flits aside The fierce hawk follows screaming on the wind, And as he swoops, she flits aside again. With funereal contractions of the windpipe The crows produce their caws, three at a time, And in their high nests, pleased at I know not what, Noise it among themselves: no doubt rejoicing To see their little brood after the storm, But not, I think, by reason of divine Insight or superior grasp of things. VIII. But if you carefully watch the rapid sun And the moon following, a fair night’s snare Never deceives you as to next day’s weather. When the new moon collects a rim of light, If that bow be obscured with a dark vapor, Then a great tempest is in preparation; If it be blushing like a virgin’s cheek, There will be wind; wind makes Diana blush; If on the fourth night (most significant) She goes pure and unclouded through the sky, All that day and the following days will be, For one full month, exempt from rain and wind. The sun, too, rising and setting in the waves, Will give you weather signs, trustworthy ones Whether at morning or when stars come out. A mackerel sky over the east at sunrise Means look out for squalls, a gale is coming, Unfavorable to trees and plants and flocks. Or when through denser strata the sun’s rays Break out dimly, or Aurora rises Pale from Tithonus’ crocus-colored chamber, Alas, the vine-leaf will not shield the cluster In the hubbub of roof-pattering bitter hail. It will be well to notice sunset, too, For the sun’s visage then has various colors; Bluish and dark means rain; if it be fiery That means an East wind; if it be dappled And mixed with red gold light, then you will see Wind and rain in commotion everywhere. Nobody can advise me, on that night, To cast off hawsers and put out to sea. But if the next day passes and the sunset Then be clear, you need not fear the weather: A bright Norther will sway the forest trees. IX. Last, what the late dusk brings, and whence the fair Clouds are blown, and secrets of the Southwind You may learn from the sun, whose prophecies No man denies, seeing black insurrections, Treacheries, and wars are told by him. When Caesar died, the great sun pitied Rome, So veiling his bright head, the godless time Trembled in fear of everlasting night; And then were portents given of earth and ocean, Vile dogs upon the roads, and hideous Strange birds, and Aetna quaking, and her fires Bursting to overflow the Cyclops’ fields With flames whirled in the air and melted stones. Thunder of war was heard in Germany From south to north, shaking the granite Alps; And a voice also through the silent groves Piercing; and apparitions wondrous pale Were seen in dead of night. Then cattle spoke (O horror!), streams stood still, the earth cracked open And tears sprang even from the temple bronze. The Po, monarch of rivers, on his back Spuming whole forests, raced through the lowland plains And bore off pens and herds; and then continually The viscera of beasts were thick with evil, Blood trickled from the springs; tall towns at night Re-echoed to the wolf-pack’s shivering howl; And never from pure heaven have there fallen So many fires, nor baleful comets burned. It seemed that once again the Roman lines, Alike in arms, would fight at Philippi; And heaven permitted those Thessalian fields To be enriched again with blood of ours. Some future day, perhaps, in that country, A farmer with his plow will turn the ground, And find the javelins eaten thin with rust, Or knock the empty helmets with his mattock And wonder, digging up those ancient bones. Paternal gods! Ancestors! Mother Vesta! You that guard Tiber and the Palatine! Now that long century is overthrown, Let not this young man fail to give us peace! Long enough beneath your rule, O Caesar, Heaven has hated us and all those triumphs Where justice was thrown down—so many wars, So many kinds of wickedness! No honor Rendered the plow, but the fields gone to ruin, The country-folk made homeless, and their scythes Beaten to straight swords on the blowing forge! War from the Euphrates to Germany; Ruptured engagements, violence of nations, And impious Mars raging the whole world over— As when a four horsed chariot rears away Plunging from the barrier, and runs wild, Heedless of the reins or the charioteer.

The world will burst like an intestine in the sun, the dark turn to granite and the granite to a name, but there will always be somebody riding the bus through these intersections strewn with broken glass among speechless women beating their little ones, always a slow alphabet of rain speaking of drifting and perishing to the air, always these definite jails of light in the sky at the wedding of this clarity and this storm and a woman's turning—her languid flight of hair traveling through frame after frame of memory where the past turns, its face sparking like emery, to open its grace and incredible harm over my life, and I will never die.

The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, 
Harvard Museum of Natural History The ovaries, when splayed, resemble sliced tomatoes. Or rose windows, each geometry precise enough to praise. I want to press my tongue against the bloodroot petal, to run its stamen along my slick shelf of teeth like a man might with a wheat stalk. Four times so far other tourists have taken me for a gallery attendant. In the glass, a slow- sidling crimson spreads over my own skewed reflection: a hesitant teen in a Harvard hoodie, the fifth, leans in to ask,Excuse me, sir? Are they really glass?— a testament to how my binder encases my breasts, my faith in the plum yew’s fruit- shorn frenzy. Dense clusters teeming with their separate blossoms, any unknowing eye might think they were living. But I know the lilac’s tell: two blemishes, bulbous where some hot glass mis-dripped, then caught forever in the filament. Sometimes, I think I’ll wake to find they’ve finally trickled off me in the night, pooled molten down the bed and gathered back again. I might thrash off both breasts in a sleepless fit, or could unfurl my clit like a pollen basket passed from a honeybee’s hind legs to the hive. It makes its secret seen. I can only answer yes. Yes, They’re real. I mean, they’re really glass. You could snap a stem between fingers with such a slight force, one stark blink — the flies flitting the gallery would fear the weight of their own landing, thick wings rapt still. When the public, in their distressed astonishment, demanded to know how the Blaschkas transported the models without a fracture in even one pistil, Leopold Blaschka revealed his own elaborate process: pack each flower tightly in its cardboard cradle, then strap them down with strong wire to restrict movement, and set each, at last, in a wooden box wrapped with burlap. They drove them straight from Manhattan in two hearses. The drivers, of course, wore black suits. Onlookers parted to allow their small procession past. I like it here, with everyone focused on the flowers. Hunched, kneeling, as if suspicious, still doubting, the teen eyes two tiny zinnias, then moves on to another case. I’ve seen many leave unsatisfied. They can’t bear to be partitioned — how can I blame them? Someone made these with their body. They let their breath unspool to form each impossible bud, crafted every flower’s fold, then waited on the heat to break to hold just one, wearing special gloves. Wouldn’t anyone wish for just one lie among a garden this precise? One daisy swapped out in secret, switched with a common courtyard flower, now waiting for someone to notice its wilt while its counterparts keep all their glisten. It does seem to me true punishment: never to change. Unflinching forever. Sometimes, near closing, when the hall becomes quiet, I really do believe they’re real.

A professor invites me to his “Black Lit” class; they’re reading Larson’s Passing. One of the black students says, “Sometimes light-skinned blacks think they can fool other blacks, but I can always tell,” looking right through me. After I tell them I am black, I ask the class, “Was I passing when I was just sitting here, before I told you?” A white woman shakes her head desperately, as if I had deliberately deceived her. She keeps examining my face, then turning away as if she hopes I’ll disappear. Why presume “passing” is based on what I leave out and not what she fills in? In one scene in the book, in a restaurant, she’s “passing,” though no one checked her at the door— “Hey, you black?” My father, who looked white, told me this story: every year when he’d go to get his driver’s license, the man at the window filling out the form would ask, “White or black?” pencil poised, without looking up. My father wouldn’t pass, but he might use silence to trap a devil. When he didn’t speak, the man would look up at my father’s face. “What did he write?” my father quizzed me.

What struck me first was their panic. Some were pulled by the wind from moving to the ends of the stacked cages, some had their heads blown through the bars— and could not get them in again. Some hung there like that—dead— their own feathers blowing, clotting in their faces. Then I saw the one that made me slow some— I lingered there beside her for five miles. She had pushed her head through the space between bars—to get a better view. She had the look of a dog in the back of a pickup, that eager look of a dog who knows she's being taken along. She craned her neck. She looked around, watched me, then strained to see over the car—strained to see what happened beyond. That is the chicken I want to be.

Passing away, saith the World, passing away: Chances, beauty and youth, sapp'd day by day: Thy life never continueth in one stay. Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey That hath won neither laurel nor bay? I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May: Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay On my bosom for aye. Then I answer'd: Yea. Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away: With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play, Hearken what the past doth witness and say: Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array, A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay. At midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay: Watch thou and pray. Then I answer'd: Yea. Passing away, saith my God, passing away: Winter passeth after the long delay: New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray, Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May. Though I tarry, wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray. Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day, My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say. Then I answer'd: Yea.

By noon your breathing had changed from normal to shallow and panicky. That’s when the nurse said Nearly there now, in the gentle voice of a parent comforting a child used to failure, slipping her arms beneath your shoulders to hoist you up the pillows, then pressing a startling gauze pad under your jaw. Nearly there now. The whole world seemed to agree— as the late April sky deepened through the afternoon into high August blue, the vapour trails of two planes converged to sketch a cross on the brow of heaven. My brother Kit and I kept our backs turned to that except now and again. It was the room I wanted to see, because it contained your last example of everything: the broken metal window-catch that meant no fresh air; your toothbrush standing to attention in its plastic mug; the neutral pink walls flushed into definite pale red by sunlight rejoicing in the flowering cherry outside; your dressing-gown like a stranger within the wardrobe eavesdropping. That should have been a sign to warn us, but unhappiness made us brave, or do I mean cowardly, and Kit and I talked as if we were already quite certain you could no longer hear us, saying how easy you were to love, but how difficult always to satisfy and relax— how impossible to talk to, in fact, how expert with silence. You breathed more easily by the time we were done, although the thought you might have heard us after all, and our words be settling into your soft brain like stones onto the bed of a stream—that made our own breathing tighter. Then the nurse looked in:Nothing will change here for a while boys, and we ducked out like criminals. I was ordering two large gins in the pub half a mile off when my mobile rang. It was the hospital. You had died. I put my drink down, then thought again and finished it. Five minutes later we were back at the door of your room wondering whether to knock. Would everything we said be written on your face, like the white cross on the heavens? Of course not. It was written in us, where no one could find it except ourselves. Your own face was wiped entirely clean— and so, with your particular worries solved, and your sadness, I could see more clearly than ever how like mine it was, and therefore how my head will eventually look on the pillow when the wall opens behind me, and I depart with my failings.

To pass over in silence Is to acknowledge logic, The necessity of form, The stunning curve of language, The curious way it seems To turn out that “love” means “need” Even in a lush garden. To pass over the Red Sea Or your bounty—so long as True silence and not some tense Paralysis of the false Is achieved—then Passover Is always a charity, The painted fish in the blue Water turns to their own colors. To pass over in silence Is to acknowledge you if This chatter dissolve as it Will in the marvelous sky.