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On a branch floating downriver a cricket, singing.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light, When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes; And seeing it asleep, so fled away, Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d that day; But to that second circle of sad Hell, Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

—“mu” twenty-eighth part— On Antiphon Island they lowered the bar and we bent back. It wasn’t limbo we were in albeit we limbo’d. Everywhere we went we limbo’d, legs bent, shoulder blades grazing the dirt, donned andoumboulouous birth-shirts, sweat salting the silence we broke... Limbo’d so low we fell and lay looking up at the clouds, backs embraced by the ground and the ground a fallen wall we were ambushed by... Later we’d sit, sipping the fig liqueur, beckoning sleep, soon-come somnolence nowhere come as yet. Where we were, not- withstanding, wasn’t there... Where we were was the hold of a ship we were caught in. Soaked wood kept us afloat... It wasn’t limbo we were in albeit we limbo’d our way there. Where we were was what we meant by “mu.” Where we were was real, reminiscent arrest we resisted, bodies briefly had, held on to • “A Likkle Sonance” it said on the record. A trickle of blood hung overhead I heard it spurts. An introvert trumpet run, trickle of sound... A trickle of water lit by the sun I saw with an injured eye, captive music ran our legs and we danced... Knees bent, asses all but on the floor, love’s bittersweet largesse... I wanted trickle turned into flow, flood, two made one by music, bodied edge gone up into air, aura, atmosphere the garment we wore. We were on a ship’s deck dancing, drawn in a dream above hold... The world was ever after, elsewhere. Where we were they said likkle for little, lick ran with trickle, weird what we took it for... The world was ever after, elsewhere, no way where we were was there

Gut eats all day and lechers all the night; So all his meat he tasteth over twice; And, striving so to double his delight, He makes himself a thoroughfare of vice. Thus in his belly can he change a sin: Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.

Alas! and am I born for this, To wear this slavish chain? Deprived of all created bliss, Through hardship, toil and pain! How long have I in bondage lain, And languished to be free! Alas! and must I still complain— Deprived of liberty. Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief This side the silent grave— To soothe the pain—to quell the grief And anguish of a slave? Come Liberty, thou cheerful sound, Roll through my ravished ears! Come, let my grief in joys be drowned, And drive away my fears. Say unto foul oppression, Cease: Ye tyrants rage no more, And let the joyful trump of peace, Now bid the vassal soar. Soar on the pinions of that dove Which long has cooed for thee, And breathed her notes from Afric’s grove, The sound of Liberty. Oh, Liberty! thou golden prize, So often sought by blood— We crave thy sacred sun to rise, The gift of nature’s God! Bid Slavery hide her haggard face, And barbarism fly: I scorn to see the sad disgrace In which enslaved I lie. Dear Liberty! upon thy breast, I languish to respire; And like the Swan unto her nest, I’d like to thy smiles retire. Oh, blest asylum—heavenly balm! Unto thy boughs I flee— And in thy shades the storm shall calm, With songs of Liberty!

Stone by stone, body by body in the grass: For this we trade our lone compass, Become swans instead, adrift in glaze- Light, kilned in the arms of each other Into vessel-vassal new. Or shrew, As the case may be. What would you do? Listen to the footsteps in the thistles. Put the kettle on for tea, and whisper it to me.

I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate, I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate. I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done. His too familiar care doth make me rue it. No means I find to rid him from my breast, Till by the end of things it be supprest. Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow; Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind. Let me or float or sink, be high or low. Or let me live with some more sweet content, Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

Know you fair, on what you look; Divinest love lies in this book, Expecting fire from your eyes, To kindle this his sacrifice. When your hands untie these strings, Think you’have an angel by th’ wings. One that gladly will be nigh, To wait upon each morning sigh. To flutter in the balmy air Of your well-perfumed prayer. These white plumes of his he’ll lend you, Which every day to heaven will send you, To take acquaintance of the sphere, And all the smooth-fac’d kindred there. And though Herbert’s name do owe These devotions, fairest, know That while I lay them on the shrine Of your white hand, they are mine.

Playwright, convict of public wrongs to men, Takes private beatings and begins again. Two kinds of valor he doth show at once: Active in ’s brain, and passive in his bones.

— Candy’s Stop, up Hwy. 52 I been ‘Candy’ since I came here young. My born name keeps but I don’t say. To her who my mama was I was pure millstone, cumbrance.Child ain’t but a towsack full of bane. Well I lit out right quick. Hitched, and so forth.   Legged it. Was rid. Accabee at first (then, thicket-hid) then Wadmalaw; out to Nash’s meat-yard, Obie’s jook.   At County Home they had this jazzhorn drumbeat orphan-band ‘ them lambs ’ they — They let me bide and listen. This gristly man he came he buttered me then took me off (swore I was surely something) let me ride in back. Some thing— (snared) (spat-on) Thing being morelike moresoever what he meant. No I’d never sound what brunts he called me what he done had I a hundred mouths. How his mouth.   Repeats on me down the years.   Everlastingly riveled-looking, like rotfruit.   Wasn’t it runched up like a grub. First chance I inched off (back through bindweed) I was gone. Nothing wrong with gone as a place for living.   Whereby a spore eats air when she has to; where I’ve fairly much clung for peace. Came the day I came here young I mothed my self.   I cleaved apart. A soul can hide like moth on bark. My born name keeps but I don’t say.