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Adrift in the liberating, late light of August, delicate, frivolous, they make their way to my front porch and flutter near the glassed-in bulb, translucent as a thought suddenly wondered aloud, illumining the air that's thick with honeysuckle and dusk. You and I are doing our best at conversation, keeping it light, steering clear of what we'd like to say. You leave, and the night becomes cluttered with moths, some tattered, their dumbly curious filaments startling against my cheek. How quickly, instinctively, I brush them away. Dazed, they cling to the outer darkness like pale reminders of ourselves. Others seem to want so desperately to get inside. Months later, I'll find the woolens, snug in their resting places, full of missing pieces.

A translator who has a phobia of moths spent three years translating a book with a moth motif. It’s ironic, she has said, that she knew more about the moths than the author of the original, who was merely fascinated. The translation contained a greater variety of moths than the original, drawn from suggestions she had made, some of which were in fact too perfect and changed back before it went to print. Her moths, the ones that were too aptly named, meant too much, her moths that she hated, where are they now? The same place as all the versions of people that have been undressed and slept with, in lieu of the people themselves, by others. That must include a version of almost everyone, lots of versions of some people, some only a flutter, animated then decided against.

The heavy, wet, guttural small-plane engine fights for air, and goes down in humid darkness about where the airport should be. I take a lot for granted, not pleased to be living under the phlegm- soaked, gaseous, foggy and irradiated heavens whose angels wear collars in propjets and live elsewhere in Clean Zones, but figuring the air is full of sorrows. I don’t blame the quick use of the entire earth on the boozy pilot come down to get a dose of cobalt for his cancer. He’s got a little life left, if he doesn’t have to take all day to reach it. With the black patches inside him, and the scars and the streaks and the sick stomach, his life is more and more like that of the lowliest child chimney sweep in the mind of the great insensible, William Blake. William Blake, the repeated one, Blake, half mad, half remembered, who knew his anatomy, down to the little-observed muscle in the shoulder that lifts the wing. The little London chimney sweeper reaches up and reaches down. In his back, every vertebra is separated from the long hours of stretching. With one deep, tired breath, the lungs go black. By the Holiday Company crane, adding a level to the hospital, on the highest land in the county, heavy sits the pure-white Air Care helicopter, with its bulging eye. It has kept many going, a good buy, something. Now someone I know says Blake in anger, angry for his brother in the factory and his sister on the ward, but tonight I have no more anger than the muscle that lifts my knee when I walk. Another pleads with the ocean that the words for suffering and trouble take place in a sound that will be all sounds and in the tidal roll of all our lives and every event, but I am silent by water, and am less to such power than a failed lung. And I think it is only a clever trick to know that one thing may be contained in another. Hence, Blake in the sweep, one in the ground in one in the air, myself in the clinic for runaway cells, now and later.

“So this is it, experience,” I thought, lugging tin buckets from the ice machines to rooms of real adults with cigarettes, mixed drinks in plastic cups, and proffered coins. I reached out for their blessings, but the tips were nothing next to rumpled, unmade beds at four in the afternoon, women in slips and men in t-shirts while the TV played. Down in the laundry room, I counted sheets, stunned by the musk that vanished in the wash, and balled up soggy towels that down the chutes exploded in bins. Before the evening rush, avid and timid for what I glimpsed at work, I left, hanging my gold vest on a hook.

My cuticles are a mess. Oh honey, by the way, did you like my new negligee? It’s a replica of one Kim Novak wore in some movie or other. I wish I had a foot-long chili dog right now. Do you like fireworks, I mean not just on the 4th of July, but fireworks any time? There are people like that, you know. They’re like people who like orchestra music, listen to it any time of day. Lopsided people, that’s what my father calls them. Me, I’m easy to please. I like ping-gong and bobcats, shatterproof drinking glasses, the smell of kerosene, the crunch of carrots. I like caterpillars and whirlpools, too. What I hate most is being the first one at the scene of a bad accident. Do I smell like garlic? Are we still in Kansas? I once had a chiropractor make a pass at me, did I ever tell you that? He said that your spine is happiest when you’re snuggling. Sounds kind of sweet now when I tell you, but he was a creep. Do you know that I have never understood what they meant by “grassy knoll.” It sounds so idyllic, a place to go to dream your life away, not kill somebody. They should have called it something like “the grudging notch.” But I guess that’s life. What is it they always say? “It’s always the sweetest ones that break your heart.” You getting hungry yet, hon? I am. When I was seven I sat in our field and ate an entire eggplant right off the vine. Dad loves to tell that story, but I still can’t eat eggplant. He says I’ll be the first woman President, it’d be a waste since I talk so much. Which do you think the fixtures are in the bathroom at the White House, gold or brass? It’d be okay with me if they were just brass. Honey, can we stop soon? I really hate to say it but I need a lady’s room.

We’re all pagans and shamans and clap your hands now we won’t stop the beat We believe in divine healing and we hate to see that evening sun go down We know when the sight of our women dressed in white each ritual night, is touching, hypnotizes The animals blush and split for us as revival, as revealed to themselves These are triumphant women. Even Sister Fame hiding out in the alley turning tricks and singing verses from the undid scripture, is touching Thank you jesus, thank you jesus, that you jesus, baby, is that you, she mutters up high between rocks and lace — his eagerness — it was all night long Sometimes he’d interrupt a recording session to tell us about his early Motown days or expand on his views of   Heaven and Hell One time he was saying how important it was to love one’s father. Do you love yours? I asked him Why don’t you tell him Why don’t you tell your father, he said I will if you do You go first

I’m talking about Mount Street. Jackhammers give it the staggers. They’re tearing up dear Mount Street. It’s got a torn-up face like Mick Jagger’s. I mean, this is Mount Street! Scott’s restaurant, the choicest oysters, brilliant fish; Purdey, the great shotgun maker—the street is complete Posh plush and (except for Marc Jacobs) so English. Remember the old Mount Street, The quiet that perfumed the air Like a flowering tree and smelled sweet As only money can smell, because after all this was Mayfair? One used to stay at the Connaught Till they closed it for a makeover. One was distraught To see the dark wood brightened and sleekness take over. Designer grease Will help guests slide right into the zone. Prince Charles and his design police Are tickled pink because it doesn’t threaten the throne. I exaggerate for effect— But isn’t it grand, the stink of the stank, That no sooner had the redone hotel just about got itself perfect Than the local council decided: new street, new sidewalk, relocate the taxi rank! Turn away from your life—away from the noise!— Leaving the Connaught and Carlos Place behind. Hidden away behind those redbrick buildings across the street are serious joys: Green grandeur on a small enough scale to soothe your mind, And birdsong as liquid as life was before you were born. Whenever I’m in London I stop by this delightful garden to hear The breeze in the palatial trees blow its shepherd’s horn. I sit on a bench in Mount Street Gardens and London is nowhere near.

Now I have tempered haste, The joyous traveller said, The steed has passed me now Whose hurrying hooves I fled. My spectre rides thereon, I learned what mount he has, Upon what summers fed; And wept to know again, Beneath the saddle swung, Treasure for whose great theft This breast was wrung. His bridle bells sang out, I could not tell their chime, So brilliantly he rings, But called his name as Time. His bin was morning light, Those straws which gild his bed Are of the fallen West. Although green lands consume Beneath their burning tread, In everlasting bright His hooves have rest.

On the day I set out on the climb, grief saddled in my back like a bag of marbles, my breath like clouds hanging on the low peaks of a mountain, on the day I set out leaving nothing behind, nothing on the bed, no version of myself, just my voice through the night, the voice I use to ward off nightmares. (My voice is a still life in itself, a shroud green and ultramarine deep blue, a bowl of apples and tangerines on a table.) On the day I set out, the mountain is high in front of me, the unreliable god of mist and fog. I have no voice to say how high my fingers must lift as if on a lover's upper lip, to take in the breath of how high my mountain is—white teeth behind a snow cap, numberless springs, cold like the enzymes in spit— a version of me is still asleep: the moving of a limb in sleep. Everything becomes lucid.

The mountain have changed to buildings Is this hallway the inside of a stem That has a rattling flower for a head, Immense tree bark with roots made out of Mailboxes? In the vertical village moons fly out of Apartment windows and though what you See is a modern city The mountain’s guitars pluck inside It’s agriculture taking an elevator Through urban caves which lead to Paths underground They say Camuy To Hutuado Taino subground like the IRT in Constant motion The streets take walks in your dark eyes Seashell necklaces make music in the Origin of silence What are we stepping on? Pineapple Fields frozen with snow Concrete dirt later the rocks of the Atlantic The sculpture of the inner earth Down there where you thought only worms And unnamed crocodiles parade Lefty stands on a corner Analyzing every seed Squeezing the walls as he passes Through at the bottom of the basement Where the boiler makes heat The flesh arrives out of a hole In the mountain that goes up like a Green wall Bodies come in making maraca sounds An invisible map out of the flora Bees arrive in the vicinity and sing Chorus while woody woodpeckers make Women out of trees and place flowers On their heads Waterfalls like Hurakan’s faucets Caress the back of Yuquiyu God to all whose tongues have the Arawak’s echoes Hallway of graffiti like the master Cave drawings made by owls when they Had hands You see the fish with pyramids inside Their stomachs Hanging near the doorways where San Lazaro turns the keys Villa Manhattan Breeze of saint juice made from Coconuts Slide down the stairs to your Belly and like a hypnotized guanabana You float down the street And win all your hands at dominoes The Moros live on the top floor eating Roots and have a rooster on the roof Africans import okra from the bodega The Indians make a base of guava On the first floor The building is spinning itself into a spiral of salsa Heaven must be calling or the Residents know the direction Because there is an upward pull If you rise too quickly from your seat You might have to comb a spirit’s Hair They float over the chimneys Arrive through the smog Appear through the plaster of Paris It is the same people in the windowed Mountains.