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MY future will not copy fair my past On any leaf but Heaven's. Be fully done, Supernal Will ! I would not fain be one Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast Upon the fulness of the heart, at last Saith no grace after meat. My wine hath run Indeed out of my cup, and there is none To gather up the bread of my repast Scattered and trampled ! Yet I find some good In earth's green herbs, and streams that bubble up Clear from the darkling ground, — content until I sit with angels before better food. Dear Christ ! when thy new vintage fills my cup, This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.

They explained to me the bloody bandages On the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, N.Y., Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master, Made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed. They showed me an officer on horseback, Waving a saber next to a burning farmhouse And a barefoot woman in a nightgown, Throwing stones after him and calling him Lucifer. I was a straw-headed boy in patched overalls. Come dark a chicken would roost in my hair. Some even laid eggs as I played my ukulele And my mother and father crossed themselves. Next, I saw myself inside an abandoned gas station Constructing a spaceship out of a coffin, Red traffic cone, cement mixer and ear warmers, When a church lady fainted seeing me in my underwear. Some days, however, they opened door after door, Always to a different room, and could not find me. There’d be only a small squeak now and then, As if a miner’s canary got caught in a mousetrap.

The cause is the consequence. — Frantz Fanon 1 He would get pulled over whenever he tried to download Blonde. He would be searched for f-bombs but not for h-e- double-hockey sticks. He would get choke-held for wearing a hat in the hallway. He would be Tasered for balling his Whopper wrapper and leaving it on the floor of the streetcar. He would get shot in the back every time he incorrectly used MLA format in the essay on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 2 He would take some E if he didn’t have to preach austerity. He would hire a tennis coach if the consultants he hired would actually fire the people to be fired. He would upgrade to the latest Galaxy if  millennials didn’t default on their student loans when he raised interest rates. He would get his shoes polished at the airport if the kiosk weren’t so far from the platinum members’ lounge. He would be placed on paid leave if  he raped the trainee from Dawson. Sexually assaulted. Allegedly.

The debt is paid, The verdict said, The Furies laid, The plague is stayed, All fortunes made; Turn the key and bolt the door, Sweet is death forevermore. Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, Nor murdering hate, can enter in. All is now secure and fast; Not the gods can shake the Past; Flies-to the adamantine door Bolted down forevermore. None can re-enter there,— No thief so politic, No Satan with a royal trick Steal in by window, chink, or hole, To bind or unbind, add what lacked, Insert a leaf, or forge a name, New-face or finish what is packed, Alter or mend eternal Fact.

To-day’s most trivial act may hold the seed Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth; Oh, cherish always every word and deed! The simplest record of thyself hath worth. If thou hast ever slighted one old thought, Beware lest Grief enforce the truth at last; The time must come wherein thou shalt be taught The value and the beauty of the Past. Not merely as a warner and a guide, “A voice behind thee,” sounding to the strife; But something never to be put aside, A part and parcel of thy present life. Not as a distant and a darkened sky, Through which the stars peep, and the moonbeams glow; But a surrounding atmosphere, whereby We live and breathe, sustained in pain and woe. A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss, Each still to each corrective and relief, Where dim delights are brightened into bliss, And nothing wholly perishes but Grief. Ah, me!—not dies—no more than spirit dies; But in a change like death is clothed with wings; A serious angel, with entranced eyes, Looking to far-off and celestial things.

From Chapter XLII The good Dame Mercy with Dame Charyte My body buryed full ryght humbly In a fayre temple of olde antyquyte, Where was for me a dyryge devoutely And with many a masse full ryght solempnely; And over my grave, to be in memory, Remembraunce made this lytell epytaphy: "O erthe, on erthe it is a wonders cace That thou arte blynde and wyll not the knowe. Though upon erthe thou hast thy dwellynge-place, Yet erthe at laste must nedes the overthrowe. Thou thynkest the to be none erthe I trowe; For yf thou dydest, thou woldest than apply To forsake pleasure and to lerne to dy. "O erthe, of erthe why arte thou so proude? Now what thou arte call to remembraunce. Open thyn eres unto my songe aloude. Is not thy beauté, strength, and puyssaunce, Though it be cladde with cloth e s of plesaunce, Very erthe and also worm e s fode, Whan erthe to erthe shall so tourne the blode? "The vyle carkes set upon a fyre Dooth often haunte the synne of lechery, Fulfyllynge the foule carnall desyre. Thus erthe with erthe is corrupte mervaylously; And erthe on erthe wyll nothynge puryfye Tyll erthe to erthe be nere subverted. For erthe with erthe is so perverted. "O mortall folke! you may beholde and se Howe I lye here, sometyme a myghty knyght; The end of joye and all prosperyte Is dethe at last, through his course and myght; After the day there cometh the derke night; For though the day be never so longe, At last the belles ryngeth to evensonge. "And my selfe called La Graunde Amoure, Sekynge adventure in the worldly glory, For to attayne the ryches and honoure, Did thynke full lytell that I sholde here ly, Tyll dethe dyde marke me full ryght pryvely. Lo what I am! and whereto you must! Lyke as I am so shall you be all dust. "Than in your mynde inwardely dyspyse The bryttle worlde, so full of doublenes, With the vyle flesshe, and ryght sone aryse Out of your slepe of mortall hevynes; Subdue the devill with grace and mekenes, That after your lyfe frayle and transytory, You may then lyve in joye perdurably."

Pastime with good company I love and shall unto I die. Grudge whoso will, but none deny, So God be pleased, this live will I. For my pastance Hunt, sing, and dance. My heart is set All godely sport To my comfort. Who shall me let? Youth will have needs daliance, Of good or ill some pastance. Company me thinketh then best All thoftes and fantasies to digest. For idleness Is chief mistress Of vices all. Than who can say But “pass the day” Is best of all? Company with honesty Is virtue, and vice to flee. Company is good or ill But every man hath his free will. The best ensue, The worst eschew, My mind shall be. Virtue to use, Vice to refuse, I shall use me.

Something in the field is working away. Root-noise. Twig-noise. Plant of weak chlorophyll, no name for it. Something in the field has mastered distance by living too close to fences. Yellow fruit, has it pit or seeds? Stalk of wither. Grass- noise fighting weed-noise. Dirt and chant. Something in the field. Coreopsis. I did not mean to say that. Yellow petal, has it wither-gift? Has it gorgeous rash? Leaf-loss and worried sprout, its bursting art. Some- thing in the. Field fallowed and cicada. I did not mean to say. Has it roar and bloom? Has it road and follow? A thistle prick, fraught burrs, such easy attachment. Stem- and stamen-noise. Can I lime- flower? Can I chamomile? Something in the field cannot.

wolves of music weave their way at a run hawthorns wheeze with clandestine laughter turning a new leaf, tide's out young ship-captains high up on balconies look far away through telescopes east and west a single fruit cut into halves beneath a tree grown from the pit I once spit out I've hung nets to trap birds, and waited how many years

on the wall the dense ivy of executions —ZBIGNIEW HERBERT We shall meet again, in Srinagar, by the gates of the Villa of Peace, our hands blossoming into fists till the soldiers return the keys and disappear. Again we’ll enter our last world, the first that vanished in our absence from the broken city. We’ll tear our shirts for tourniquets and bind the open thorns, warm the ivy into roses. Quick, by the pomegranate— the bird will say—Humankind can bear everything. No need to stop the ear to stories rumored in branches: We’ll hear our gardener’s voice, the way we did as children, clear under trees he’d planted: “It’s true, my death, at the mosque entrance, in the massacre, when the Call to Prayer opened the floodgates”—Quick, follow the silence— “and dawn rushed into everyone’s eyes.” Will we follow the horned lark, pry open the back gate into the poplar groves, go past the search post into the cemetery, the dust still uneasy on hurried graves with no names, like all new ones in the city? “It’s true” (we’ll hear our gardener again). “That bird is silent all winter. Its voice returns in spring, a plaintive cry. That’s when it saw the mountain falcon rip open, in mid-air, the blue magpie, then carry it, limp from the talons.” Pluck the blood: My words will echo thus at sunset, by the ivy, but to what purpose? In the drawer of the cedar stand, white in the verandah, we’ll find letters: When the post offices died, the mailman knew we’d return to answer them. Better if he’d let them speed to death, blacked out by Autumn’s Press Trust not like this, taking away our breath, holding it with love’s anonymous scripts: “See how your world has cracked. Why aren’t you here? Where are you? Come back. Is history deaf there, across the oceans?” Quick, the bird will say. And we’ll try the keys, with the first one open the door into the drawing room. Mirror after mirror, textiled by dust, will blind us to our return as we light oil lamps. The glass map of our country, still on the wall, will tear us to lace— We’ll go past our ancestors, up the staircase, holding their wills against our hearts. Their wish was we return—forever!—and inherit(Quick, the bird will say) that to which we belong, not like this— to get news of our death after the world’s. (for Suvir Kaul)