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Near the dry river’s water-mark we found Your brother Minnegan, Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground. Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green, Told me to find you, even in the rain, And tell you he was drowned. I hid behind the chassis on the bank, The wreck of someone’s Ford: I was afraid to come and wake you drunk: You told me once the waking up was hard, The daylight beating at you like a board. Blood in my stomach sank. Beside, you told him never to go out Along the river-side Drinking and singing, clattering about. You might have thrown a rock at me and cried I was to blame, I let him fall in the road And pitch down on his side. Well, I’ll get hell enough when I get home For coming up this far, Leaving the note, and running as I came. I’ll go and tell my father where you are. You’d better go find Minnegan before Policemen hear and come. Beany went home, and I got sick and ran, You old son of a bitch. You better hurry down to Minnegan; He’s drunk or dying now, I don’t know which, Rolled in the roots and garbage like a fish, The poor old man.

I. Tonight, I look, thunderstruck at the gold head of my grandchild. Almost asleep, he buries his feet between my thighs; his little straw eyes close in the near dark. I smell the warmth of his raw slightly foul breath, the new death waiting to rot inside him. Our breaths equalize our heartbeats; every muscle of the chest uncoils, the arm bones loosen in the nest of nerves. I think of the peace of walking through the house, pointing to the name of this, the name of that, an educator of a new man. Mother. Grandmother. Wise Snake-woman who will show the way; Spider-woman whose black tentacles hold him precious. Or will tear off his head, her teeth over the little husband, the small fist clotted in trust at her breast. This morning, looking at the face of his father, I remembered how, an infant, his face was too dark, nose too broad, mouth too wide. I did not look in that mirror and see the face that could save me from my own darkness. Did he, looking in my eye, see what I turned from: my own dark grandmother bending over gladioli in the field, her shaking black hand defenseless at the shining cock of flower? I wanted that face to die, to be reborn in the face of a white child. I wanted the soul to stay the same, for I loved to death, to damnation and God-death, the soul that broke out of me. I crowed: My Son! My Beautiful! But when I peeked in the basket, I saw the face of a black man. Did I bend over his nose and straighten it with my fingers like a vine growing the wrong way? Did he feel my hand in malice? Generations we prayed and fucked for this light child, the shining god of the second coming; we bow down in shame and carry the children of the past in our wallets, begging forgiveness. II. A picture in a book, a lynching. The bland faces of men who watch a Christ go up in flames, smiling, as if he were a hooked fish, a felled antelope, some wild thing tied to boards and burned. His charring body gives off light—a halo burns out of him. His face scorched featureless; the hair matted to the scalp like feathers. One man stands with his hand on his hip, another with his arm slung over the shoulder of a friend, as if this moment were large enough to hold affection. III. How can we wake from a dream we are born into, that shines around us, the terrible bright air? Having awakened, having seen our own bloody hands, how can we ask forgiveness, bring before our children the real monster of their nightmares? The worst is true. Everything you did not want to know.

dear suicide how is the war? is it eating? tell me of the girls charging backwards into dumb tides death’s wet mouth lapping their ankles, knees, eyebrows. tell me of the sissies like drunk fireworks, rocketing into earth afterimage burned into river & cement memory. how is the war? does it have a wife? does she know how the bodies got in her bed? dear suicide i know your real name. i bind you from doing harm. i enter the room like a germ. i say your name, it is my name. the walls cave around me like a good aunt. the window hums. the door rocks me. the dresser leaves to go make tea. the room knows my name. it binds us from doing harm. dear suicide where are you keeping my friends? every cup i turn over holds only air. i jimmy open a tulip expecting their faces but find only the yellow heart. what have you done with them? yesterday i took my body off beat it on the front steps with a broom & not one of them came giggling out my skin yelling you found me! not one of them i called for was already in my hand. dear suicide you a mutual friend a wedding guest, a kind of mother, a kind of self love, a kind of freedom. i wish you were a myth but mothers my color have picked ocean over boat, have sent children to school in rivers. i known niggas who just needed quiet. i seen you dance, it made me hard. i would not deny you what others have found in the sweet mildew behind your ear. i know what happens when you ask for a kiss, it’s all tongue, you don’t unlatch, you suck face until the body is gone. dear suicide that one? i promised him i would kill for him & my nigga was my nigga & my word is my word. dear suicide, where are you? come see me. come outside. i am at your door, suicide. i’ll wait. i’ve offed my earrings & vaselined my face. i put on my good sweats for this. i brought no weapon but my fist. dear suicide you made my kin thin air. his entire body dead as hair. you said his name like a dare. you’ve done your share. i ride down lake street friendbare to isles of lakes, wet pairs stare back & we compare our mirror glares. fish scare into outlines, i blare a moon’s wanting, i wear their faces on t-shirts, little flares in case i bootleg my own prayer & submit to your dark affair. tell me they’re in your care. be fair. heaven or hell, i hope my niggas all there if i ever use the air as a stair.

HOW TO SUCCEED IN TORTURE WITHOUT REALLY TRYING 1. FIRST THINGS FIRST: Surprise, catch your source off balance when he least expects it: At the moment he opens his eyes in the morning While he shits on the can. Detain and confine, quickly, quickly cut him off from the known. Plunge your source into the strange, the invisible wells gone dry in his bones Drained by his eyes He’s in occupied territory— he could walk a long time and find nowhere, nothing, nada no doors, no tunnels, windows 2. KEEP IT SIMPLE: Familiar clothing reinforces identity. Replace the source

Who did he talk to Did she trust what she saw Who does the talking Whose words formed awkward curves Did the lion finally talk Did the sleeping lion talk Did you trust a north window What made the dog bark What causes a grey dog to bark What does the juggler tell us What does the juggler’s redness tell us Is she standing in an image Were they lost in the forest Were they walking through a forest Has anything been forgotten Did you find it in the dark Is that one of them new atomic-powered wristwatches Was it called a talking song Is that an oblong poem Was poetry the object Was there once a road here ending at a door Thus from bridge to bridge we came along Did the machine seem to talk Did he read from an empty book Did the book grow empty in the dark, grey felt hat blowing down the street, arms pumping back and forth, legs slightly bowed Are there fewer ears than songs Did he trust a broken window Did he wake beneath a tree in the recent snow Whose words formed difficult curves Have the exaggerations quieted down The light is lovely on trees which are not large My logic is all in the melting-pot My life now is very economical I can say nothing of my feeling about space Nothing could be clearer than what you see on this wall Must we give each one a name Is it true they all have names Would it not have been simpler Would it not have been simpler to begin Were there ever such buildings I must remember to mention the trees I must remember to invent some trees Who told you these things Who taught you how to speak Who taught you not to speak Whose is the voice that empties

The teddy bear cholla and the fat fat • Oh buckthorn, devil, whipple, teddy bear • Oh beavertail, oh pancake, porcupine • Oh plump saguaro with your hairy arms, I love Each of you with a different nerve of heart. Especially you, so trim, so pert, your birds Cupped in your pits and crotches, little friends • Oh areoles and aureoles, the orioles With yellow caps are havering and hot Making themselves a breeze with their cut wings • I ask the docent and he indicates • Oh nation, how you might have been, spread from So sure an order, with such tendering love

We remember so little, We are certain of nothing. We long to perish into the absolute. Where is a mountain To spread its snowfields for us like a shawl? You might begin, The men who come to see me are not exactly lovers. Or,Seen at a distance the gazelle is blue. That’s just your way of cheering me up. You might begin, The quality of the telegram is vulnerable. Or even,The spirit of the telegram is virginal. By now I am ravenous. You might begin, Nothing’s more passionate than a train, Entering an enormous depot, Empty except for two lovers, irreconcilable, Parting.

the fields beneath (st pancras old church) I make my tour of the garden waiting room where the tall trees wander among the corpses. I might go past the last resting place of Sir John Soane in his stone telephone kiosk, or the wooden bench where the Beatles sat on their “Mad Day Out” July 28th, 1968. The body of J.C. Bach, “The English Bach,” lies somewhere near here, lost to the Railway in 1865. A plaque remembers him as Queen Charlotte’s music tutor, who collaborated with someone and died young. Perhaps Jerry Cruncher got him, or perhaps he survived and is strolling with his friend in the fields beneath. I drag my feet through the backsliding seasons towards a gate in the wall with its timetable of opening hours. the song of the needles Needles have the sudden beauty of a first line. They’re always new and surprising as they burst from their paper covering. They sing as they hit the air. You catch sight of them out of the corner of your eye, glinting softly to themselves as they contemplate their next move. What they’re suggesting is inspired, but a certain sadness attends their description of what is going on. You don’t know whether to look away, or accept what they’re saying. If you’re lucky you’ll feel a pop as one of them enters your fistula and a cool feeling of recognition spreads up through your arm. grand canyon suite Every few minutes someone’s alarm goes off because of a blood clot or a sudden fall in pressure, then the first two notes of Ferde Grofé’s “On the Trail” goes clip-clopping down the Grand Canyon of the ward. Now the first two notes of the song are joined by the same two notes from a neighboring machine, then another two, and another, till the whole hopeless blind herd is clip-clopping off into the sunset.

The sunlight was not our concern or even The pane it shone through, and no one was going Down for the mail, and the four lettuces The gardener brought as a gift seemed to be A calculated bounty, so that early on We knew we were going to be stuck with ourselves The rest of the day, the vicissitudes Marching in rows from the forest, the balms Not arriving till nightfall. On the prowl Since morning, the wind had a touch too much Of motivation, an annoying way Of exactly ruffling the same oak leaf As if it were practicing a piano trill; All day, repetitive birds, far off, Were either boring themselves to death Or, drunk on instinct, doing their thing: Ritual dances, territorial rites— The whole imperial egg. What nests Ambition is weaving in us is hard To say: after the flat occasion, The unshared sphere, each childish wish Grows hopeless finding this is what the world is. For this, the recommended cures are useless: A cheery hello to the disaffected At breakfast? A soupful of tears at dinner? You could spill the whole silly story out To one more demanding, ill-tempered beauty You happened to meet at the A. & P., And still every greedy shopping cart, First overstuffed and then abandoned In the parking lot, would leave in its wake Some human need, ignored, half-starved . . . Torn between having nothing to say And saying it, whole diaries get down: How terrible to have dressed beautifully for the rain! . . . I was launched on New York’s bisexual muddle . . .

1The Poet Down for Patrick Kavanagh He sits between the doctor and the law. Neither can help. Barbiturate in paw one, whiskey in paw two, a dying man: the poet down, and his fell caravan. They laugh and they mistake the lash that lurks in his tongue for the honey of his works. The poet is at bay, the hounds baying, dig his grave with careful kindness, saying: 'Another whiskey, and make it a large one!' Priests within, acolytes at the margin the red impaled bull's roar must fascinate — they love the dead, the living man they hate. They were designing monuments — in case — and making furtive sketches of his face, and he could hear, above their straining laughs, the rustling foolscap of their epitaphs. 2  The Poet as Mastercraftsman for Thomas Kinsella Eras do not end when great poets die, for poetry is not whole, it is where man chose mountains to conform, to carve his own face among the Gothic richness and the sky, and the gargoyles, and the lesser tradesmen. Praise from the apprentice is always shown in miniatures of a similar stone. I saw the master in his human guise open doors to let me in, and rhythm out. He smiled and entertained into the night. I was aware of work undone. His eyes, like owls', warned images from the room. Under the stairs the muse was crying; shields clashed in the kitchen and the war drum's boom, men in celtic war dress entered from the right. I left, my conversation put to rout. To poets peace poetry never yields. 3The Poet as Black Sheep for Paul Durcan I have seen him dine in middle-class surroundings, his manners refined, as his family around him talk about nothing, one of their favourite theses. I have seen him lying between the street and pavement, atoning, dying for their sins, the fittest payment he can make for them, to get drunk and go to pieces. On his father's face in sparse lines etched out by ice, the puritan race has come to its zenith of grey spite, its climax of hate, its essence of frigidity. Let the bourgeoisie beware, who could not control his head and kept it in their care until the brain bled: this head is a poet's head, this head holds a galaxy. 4The Person as Dreamer: We Talk about the Future for Des Healy It has to be a hill, high, of course, and twilit. There have to be some birds, all sadly audible: a necessary haze, and small wristlets of rain, yes,and a tremendous air of satisfaction. Both of us will be old and both our wives, of course, have died, young, and tragic. And all our children have gone their far ways, estranged, or else not begotten. We have been through a war, been hungry, and heroes: and here we are now, calm, fed, and reminiscent. The hills are old, silent: our pipe-smoke rises up. We have come a long way . . . . 5The Poet Dreams and Resolves for Macdara Woods To be alone, and not to be lonely, to have time to myself, and not be bored; to live in some suburban house, beside the mountains, with an adequate supply of stout and spirits (or of stout only), and some cigarettes, and writing paper, and a little cheap food, and a small hoard of necessary books, where I could write in dark as monks did, with only blue sky as interference, wind as soul-reaper. But what would I do if on certain nights I was mad in heat for the public lights? I would chain myself to a living tree to foil the Sirens of the distant city.