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No coward soul is mine No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere I see Heaven's glories shine And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear O God within my breast Almighty ever-present Deity Life, that in me hast rest, As I Undying Life, have power in Thee Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts, unutterably vain, Worthless as withered weeds Or idlest froth amid the boundless main To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by thy infinity, So surely anchored on The steadfast rock of Immortality. With wide-embracing love Thy spirit animates eternal years Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears Though earth and moon were gone And suns and universes ceased to be And Thou wert left alone Every Existence would exist in thee There is not room for Death Nor atom that his might could render void Since thou art Being and Breath And what thou art may never be destroyed.

Yes, your face like asphalt dust on my tongue whenever it rains. I’ll say it’s the last time I call, tomorrow. In your arms it won’t be the same, each step farther from the border. Gin and tonics. Tequila grapefruits. I threw that black mug at your face after gin, after tequila, I didn’t know Enrique’s Journey would trigger me, I’m sorry. I drank too much. I drink too much, yes, I know. It wasn’t me who threw it, I said, but it was. It’s me who needs to learn how to face grandpa’s bullet shells, bottles, broken chairs, doors he woke us up with. I was four. I saw Mom between his gun and Grandma. I was four. I need to forgive the coins he placed in my hands to buy him vodka. Grandpa chased every single one of his daughters with his machete in the middle of the day, in the middle of the night, I didn’t know what to do except climb the water tower across the street with Red Power Ranger. He’s chased us to this country that trained him to stay quiet when “his boss” put prisoners in black bags, then pushed them out the truck, “for everyone to see what happens to bad people here.” Gin, straight up. Tequila shots. I’ve picked up the shards in our apartment, wiped the black smudge next to our bed, promised never to do it again, that I’ll seek help, but I don’t. I make an excuse. No one understands why Abuelita never left him. It’s mid-June, Venus and Mars the closest they’ve been in 2,000 years, but I’ve never seen grandparents hug, or hold hands. I make an excuse. You kept rubbing your hands. When I turned six grandpa quit drinking. He stayed at home at night but never talked to us. He didn’t like gin. Didn’t like writers. Didn’t like leftists. Everyone gone except one aunt. You’re not here. Tomorrow, tampoco. These walls snore like grandpa’s slurred shouts. I thought the border would take him. All my aunts, my mom, thought so too. We’re all running from the sun on his machete. The moon on his gun.

Out of orange juice out of gin. Me & him? We like to walk around. Lumpy houses cars on blocks. Jesus Jesus rest your head.

It's noisy, noisy overhead, the birds are winging south, and every bird is opening a noisy, noisy mouth. They fill the air with loud complaint, they honk and quack and squawk— they do not feel like flying, but it's much too far to walk.

You died. And because you were Greek they gave you a coin to carry under your tongue and then also biscuits and honey. When you came to the riverbank you saw a crazy-looking black bumboat on the water with a figure standing in it, lanky and dressed darkly, holding a sweep. You were taken across, and you gave your coin for the passage, and continued until you came to a three-headed dog, who snarled and threatened you, even though you were not trying to escape. You gave him the biscuits smeared with honey, and you passed onward to the field of asphodel and through the gate of Tartarus. Or you died and you were Navajo. They had carried you out of the hogan earlier so you’d die in the sunshine. Or if it happened inside suddenly, they stuffed up the smokehole and boarded the front entrance, and cut an opening in the back, the north-facing, dark-facing side, to carry you out, and no one ever used that hogan again. They took off your moccasins and put them on again wrong side to, the left one on the right foot, the right on the left, so that your chindi would be confused and unable to return along your tracks. They washed your hair in suds made from the yucca. Then they gave you enough fried bread and water to last four days, and you set off on your journey. But actually none of these things happened. You just died.

Nurses and nuns — their sails whiter than those of the yachts in the bay, they come and go on winged feet, most of them, or in sensible shoes. July, and I should be climbing among stones or diving, but for broken bones, from the rocks below. I try to read a new novel set aside; but a sword-swift pain in the left shoulderblade, the result of a tumble in Sheridan Square, makes reading difficult: writing you can do in your head. It starts to rain on the sea, suddenly dark, the pier, the gardens and the church spires of Dun Laoghaire. You would think it was suddenly October as smoke flaps, the yachts tack violently and those caught in the downpour run for cover. But in a few minutes the sun shines again, the leaves and hedges glisten as if with dew in that fragrant freshness after rain when the world seems made anew before confusion, before pain; and I think of you, a funny-face but solemn, with the sharpest mind I know, a thoughtful creature of unconscious grace bent to your books in the sun or driving down to New York for an evening on the town. Doors open wherever you go in that furious place; for you are the light rising on lost islands, the spéir-bhean the old poets saw gleam in the morning mist. When you walk down Fifth Avenue in your lavender suit, your pony eyes opaque, I am the one beside you, and life is bright with the finest and best. And I have seen, as you have not, such is your modesty, men turn to watch your tangle of golden hair, your graceful carriage and unhurried air as if you belonged to history of ‘her story’, that mystery. You might have been a saint or a great courtesan, anachronistic now in some ways, in some ways more up-to-date than the most advanced of those we know. While you sit on your sun-porch in Connecticut re-reading Yeats in a feminist light I am there with you.

These frail, white widows who get their hair done weekly in tight curls, like little flowers, bend their heads until the applause says it’s time to be brave again.

east the whole moon burns behind jamestown seven wings of geese light the thin ice west the asian sun bloody on the interstate spring flowers break on the gray prairie exit fingerprints on the rearview mirror feral shadows transposed near fargo

I turned to speak to God, About the world’s despair; But to make bad matters worse, I found God wasn’t there. God turned to speak to me (Don’t anybody laugh) God found I wasn’t there— At least not over half. Originally appeared in the April 1936 issue of Poetry magazine.

What I adore is not horses, with their modern domestic life span of 25 years. What I adore is a bug that lives only one day, especially if it’s a terrible day, a day of train derailment or chemical lake or cop admits to cover-up, a day when no one thinks of anything else, least of all that bug. I know how it feels, born as I’ve been into these rotting times, as into sin. Everybody’s busy, so distraught they forget to kill me, and even that won’t keep me alive. I share my home not with horses, but with a little dog who sees poorly at dusk and menaces stumps, makes her muscle known to every statue. I wish she could have a single day of   language, so that I might reassure her don’t be afraid— our whole world is dead and so can do you no harm.