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I 1 Pearl, the precious prize of a king, Chastely set in cherished gold, In all the East none equalling, No peer to her could I behold. So round, so rare, a radiant thing, So smooth she was, so small of mold, Wherever I judged gems glimmering I set her apart, her price untold. Alas, I lost her in earth’s green fold; Through grass to the ground, I searched in vain. I languish alone; my heart grows cold For my precious pearl without a stain. 2 Since in that spot it slipped from me, I lingered, longing for that delight That from my sins once set me free And my happiness raised to the highest height. Her going wounds me grievously; It burns my breast both day and night. Yet I never imagined a melody So sweet as she, so brief, and slight. But memory flowed through my mind’s sight: I thought how her color in clods had lain O dust that dims what once was bright, My precious pearl without a stain. 3 Rare spices on that spot must spread: Such riches there to rot have run, Blooms of yellow and blue and red, Their sheen a shimmer against the sun, Flower and fruit nor faded nor dead, Where the pearl dropped down in mouldering dun; Each grass from a lifeless grain is bred, Else to harvest no wheat were won: Always from good is good begun. So seemly a seed could not die in vain, That sprig nor spice there would be none Of that precious pearl without a stain. 4 To the spot which I in speech portray, I entered in that arbor green, In August on a holy day, When the corn is cut with sickles keen. On the little rise where my pearl rolled away, The fairest flowers formed a screen: Gillyflower, ginger, gromwell spray, With peonies powdered in between. If they were seemly to be seen, Far sweeter the scents from that domain, More worthy her dwelling, well I ween, My precious pearl without a stain. 5 I mourned, hands clenched, before that mound, For the piercing cold of grief had caught Me in the doleful dread and bound My heart, though reason solace sought. I longed for my pearl, locked in the ground, While fierce contentions in me fought. In Christ, though comfort could be found, My wretched will was still distraught. I fell upon that flowery plot. Such odors eddied in my brain, To sudden slumber I was brought By that precious pearl without a stain.

MATTHEW xiii I know the ways of learning; both the head And pipes that feed the press, and make it run; What reason hath from nature borrowed, Or of itself, like a good huswife, spun In laws and policy; what the stars conspire, What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire; Both th'old discoveries and the new-found seas, The stock and surplus, cause and history; All these stand open, or I have the keys: Yet I love thee. I know the ways of honour; what maintains The quick returns of courtesy and wit; In vies of favours whether party gains When glory swells the heart and moldeth it To all expressions both of hand and eye, Which on the world a true-love-knot may tie, And bear the bundle wheresoe'er it goes; How many drams of spirit there must be To sell my life unto my friends or foes: Yet I love thee. I know the ways of pleasure; the sweet strains The lullings and the relishes of it; The propositions of hot blood and brains; What mirth and music mean; what love and wit Have done these twenty hundred years and more; I know the projects of unbridled store; My stuff is flesh, not brass; my senses live, And grumble oft that they have more in me Than he that curbs them, being but one to five: Yet I love thee. I know all these and have them in my hand; Therefore not seeled but with open eyes I fly to thee, and fully understand Both the main sale and the commodities; And at what rate and price I have thy love, With all the circumstances that may move. Yet through the labyrinths, not my grovelling wit, But thy silk twist let down from heav'n to me Did both conduct and teach me how by it To climb to thee.

Pease porridge hot, Pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot Nine days old.

On my cutting board, I discovered them, the tiniest of ants, roaming dots of lead. At first, they were too few to classify, hiding under crumbs, these scavengers of leftovers. Admiring their labor, I immediately granted them citizenship, these tailgaters of a kitchen's routines. In Miami, I had no stove, working far from my home. My wife was a midnight call to San Bernardino. While searching for crumbs, especially for the taste of apricot jelly, they fell into a line across my cutting board; I saw it again, saw the line my sixth-grade teacher drew on the board, pointing to each end. While he planted himself on his desk, he leaned his face toward us, telling us in a low voice: "You don't see it yet, you're too young still, but that line in front of you continues infinitely on either side. And if there is the slightest slope in that line, either way, it will slowly begin to sag, then curve and veer and eventually one end will find the other. And lines, lines are never perfect, they are like us, never completely straight. So just imagine the searching that goes on all around us, every day. And to happen on that union is really to witness the most earthly of forms you'll ever get to know. If you're lucky, you'll see that, even luckier if you're part of that union."

A pedal-pusher said to me No braykaiser No sterfput A-stepping and a-stoumping cretin-wise Could drive a man to madness Just as no thousand Orphas all draped in damp peignoirs Doing their great kochera With the prima donna Of Iquzegdamoda Of Paczevast Of Anunec Each Orpha in an evening gown Imploring of our pedal-pusher To go a-step and go a-stoump all over yet again With a thousand mops And a thousand sterfputs imploring them The braykaiser in me The sterfput in me The mop in me The kochera in me The Paczevast in me The Anunec in me The Iquzegdamoda in me And all the stoumpers The steppers The mops The evening gowns And all the Orphas All the pedal-pushers The damp peignoirs The cretins The prima donnas Who beg The kocheras The Iquzegdamodas The Anunecs And all the Paczevasts To step And to stoump for the sake of love The great flowering love Of a thousand pedal-pushers A-draped in damp peignoirs Will lead no braykaiser No sterfput No mop No kochera No Paczevast No Anunec No Iquzegdamoda To implore a man to madness And that is what a-stepping and a-stoumping cretin-wise A pedal-pusher said to me

Tottering and elastic, middle name of Groan, ramfeezled after a hard night at the corpse-polishing plant, slope- shouldered, a half loaf of bread, even his hair tired, famished, fingering the diminished beans in his pocket—you meet him. On a thousand street corners you meet him, emerging from the subway, emerging from your own chest—this sight’s shrill, metallic vapors pass into you. His fear is of being broken, of becoming too dexterous in stripping the last few shoelaces of meat from a chicken’s carcass, of being moved by nothing short of the Fall of Rome, of being stooped in the cranium over some loss he’s forgotten the anniversary of.... You meet him, know his defeat, though proper and inevitable, is not yours, although yours also is proper and inevitable: so many defeats queer and insignificant (as illustration: the first time you lay awake all night waiting for dawn—and were disappointed), so many no-hope exhaustions hidden, their gaze dully glazed inward.—And yet we all fix our binoculars on the horizon’s hazy fear-heaps and cruise toward them, fat sails forward.... You meet him on the corners, in bus stations, on the blind avenues leading neither in nor out of hell, you meet him and with him you walk.

When she came to visit me, I turned my face to the wall— though only that morning, I'd bent my head at the bell and with the host on my tongue, mumbled thanks. Cranked up, then down in my bed— I told the nurses jokes, newly precocious, but too old at twelve to be anything but a patient. I slouched in my robe among the other child-guests of St. Joseph, the parrot-eyed scald masks, the waterheads and harelips, the fat girl with the plastic shunt. The old crippled nun on her wheeled platform dispensed her half-witted blessings, then was gone like the occasional covered gurneys sliding by my numbered door.Gone told me I'd go away too— orderly as dusk in the brick courtyard: the blank windows curtained one by one. I could not abide that yearning face calling me home. Like the Gauls, in my penciled translations: I saw Caesar was my home. Through the streets of the occupied city, his gold mask rose, implacable. In the fervent improvisational style of the collaborator— I imagined pain not as pain but the flickering light embedded in the headboard, the end of the snake-wire uncoiling from the nurses' station. The painkiller winked in its paper cup, its bleak chirp meant respect should be paid for the way I too wielded oblivion, staring at the wall till six, gifts unopened in her lap, the early dark deepening between us.

I read that in this famous person’s poems “she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self.” Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn’t know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” where he said an artist is different from other people because instead of eating an apple he paints it. Even then I thought why can’t he paint it and then eat it, the way at eight, the war just over, I stood shoeless in line in the snowy playground where one of the kids was handing out something that turned out to be small pieces of orange peel, something exotic we’d never seen before which I smelled, nibbled, and finally ate for this poem.

One can’t help admiring their rickety grace and old-world feathers like seasoned boardwalk planks. They pass in silent pairs, as if a long time ago they had wearied of calling out. The wind tips them, their ungainly, light-brown weight, into a prehistoric wobble, wings’-end fingers stretching from fingerless gloves, necks slightly tucked and stiff, peering forward and down, like old couples arm in arm on icy sidewalks, careful, careful, mildly surprised by how difficult it has become to stay dignified and keep moving even after the yelping gulls have gone; even after the scattered sand, and the quietly lodged complaints.

Fire ran horrified from its ashes. In the afterglow, cinematic shadows fled from flesh and blood. Scars appeared, followed years later by their wounds. Blinks of red dinged relentlessly, but there was nowhere to stop for the train pulling its wreckage.