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Mother died last night, Mother who never dies. Winter was in the air, many months away but in the air nevertheless. It was the tenth of May. Hyacinth and apple blossom bloomed in the back garden. We could hear Maria singing songs from Czechoslovakia — How alone I am— songs of that kind. How alone I am, no mother, no father —

Where are you now, my poems, my sleepwalkers? No mumbles tonight? Where are you, thirst, fever, humming tedium? The sodium streetlights burr outside my window, steadfast, unreachable, little astonishments lighting the way uphill. Where are you now, when I need you most? It’s late. I’m old. Come soon, you feral cats among the dahlias.

Last night in bed I mouthed a prayer of my own composition. It sounded offhand, it was carelessly addressed, it twisted my meaning entirely, it left an ache, I didn’t know what I was doing. So I took down my yellowed copy of French With Pictures by the late literary critic I.A. Richards and I put my petition into soft French words. I.A. Richards believed that irony was the language of redemption. He wrote and lectured famously on this, but his masterpiece was French With Pictures. “The chapeau is on the table.” “The man with the beard stands before the window.” “She comes from a village by the sea.” There is no improving the old traditions. They are already mortal, partial, and wrong. The woman at the table by the window puts her head into her hands. “Into your hands,” she said.

A man can give up so much, can limit himself to handwritten correspondence, to foods made of whole grains, to heat from a woodstove, logs hewn by his own hand and stacked neatly like corpses by the backdoor. He can play nocturnes by heart. They will not make the beloved appear. He can learn the names of all the birds in the valley. Not one will be enticed to learn his.

Miami Beach: wartime Imagine or remember how the road at last led us Over bridges like prepositions, linking a drawl of islands. The coast curved away like a question mark, listening slyly And shyly whispered the insomniac Atlantic. But we were uncertain of both question and answer, Stiff and confused and bemused in expendable khaki, Seeing with innocent eyes, the walls gleaming, And the alabaster city of a rich man’s dream. Borne by the offshore wind, an exciting rumor, The legend of tropic islands, caresses the coast like hysteria, Bringing a sound like bells rung under sea; And brings the infected banker and others whose tenure Is equally uncertain, equally certain: the simple And perfect faces of women—like the moon Whose radiance is disturbing and quite as impersonal: Not to be warmed by and never ample. They linger awhile in the dazzling sepulchral city, Delicately exploring their romantic diseases, The gangster, the capitalist and their proteg

Great soldier of the fighting clan, Across Port Arthur's frowning face of stone You drew the battle sword of old Japan, And struck the White Tsar from his Asian throne. Once more the samurai sword Struck to the carved hilt in your loyal hand, That not alone your heaven-descended lord Should meanly wander in the spirit land. Your own proud way, O eastern star, Grandly at last you followed. Out it leads To that high heaven where all the heroes are, Lovers of death for causes and for creeds.

The release of water in the base so controlled that the surface tension, tabletop of stability, a mirror, remains unbroken. Moisture seeps down polished basalt sides. This is how I grieve, barely enough to dampen river stones, until fibers in my husband’s tweed jacket brush my fingers as I fold it into a box. How close the whirlpool under my feet.

There  is a  sorceress in our night.  A  sky  that  only  moves  memory to make place  for  the  mangoes of last month.  There is an old man who says,Libéremoi.  And  means,  Take  everything   but  my  blackness.  Only  in the dark do doves  find   reason.  Only  in  the  dark  do  doves  have  reason to believe that vengeance  is  light  hanging  on  fallen  tree.  After each  fall, we  ask, where is the   island,   the  sugarcane  that  disappeared  in  our hunger,  the  water that emptied  our  thirst,  the  song   that  robbed  our  nightmare?   They  mock  us. They  tell  us to  whisper in their ears.  They will obey.  But  curses  beat  the air wild.  The air is faint.  And they tell us,Stop plotting fire. You are in the wrongland even if the roosters recognize you. They hated our black. What they didn't understand is that it illuminates their world.

A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

As the immense dew of Florida Brings forth The big-finned palm And green vine angering for life, As the immense dew of Florida Brings forth hymn and hymn From the beholder, Beholding all these green sides And gold sides of green sides, And blessed mornings, Meet for the eye of the young alligator, And lightning colors So, in me, come flinging Forms, flames, and the flakes of flames.