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We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are. Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family. Then back to the world, polished by soft whips. We dream; we don’t remember. Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mother’s body. Machine of the mother: white city inside her. And before that: earth and water. Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass. And before, cells in a great darkness. And before that, the veiled world. This is why you were born: to silence me. Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece. I improvised; I never remembered. Now it’s your turn to be driven; you’re the one who demands to know: Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant? Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us; it is your turn to address it, to go back asking what am I for? What am I for?

Because our family is from the countryside, Your father liked falling from high places. Limber feet make expert tree climbers. The coconut — meat for eating, fiber for the buttonmaker. Your father liked falling from high places. Upon landing, he smiles. I carry my share. The coconut — meat for eating, fiber for the buttonmaker. Where the bend in the trunk begins matters most. Upon landing, he smiles. I carry my share. Husband and wife walk home, avoiding rice paddies. Where the bend in the trunk begins matters most. Even if they are full, trees that stand straight: avoid climbing. Husband and wife walk home, avoiding rice paddies. Your grandmother warned me many times over. Even if they are full, trees that stand straight: avoid climbing. But we were young, the city called to us like a wilderness. Your grandmother warned me many times over. Saigon is big, too busy, lacking decency. But we were young, the city called to us like a wilderness. The day he died, the sun heated the cement too hot for bare feet. Saigon is big, too busy, lacking decency. Afterwards, home brought no comfort. The day he died, the sun heated the cement too hot for bare feet. The New World Hotel stands fourteen stories. Afterwards, home brought no comfort, Because tragedy cannot save face. The New World Hotel stands fourteen stories. Everyone here must remember my new dress last fall, Because tragedy cannot save face. Our neighbors recount our tale with great skill and detail. Everyone here must remember my new dress last fall. With the white of his palms alone, your father made us a living. Our neighbors recount our tale with great skill and detail. The palm trees out front aren’t tall enough. With the white of his palms alone, your father made us a living. Even when we were promised, I could see he had ability. The palm trees out front aren’t tall enough. Mind your father, improve yourself, head upwards. Even when we were promised, I could see he had ability. He climbed until he got us to the city. Mind your father, improve yourself, head upwards. Limber feet make expert tree climbers. Because our family is from the countryside, He climbed until he got us to the city.

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths, If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine?— Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried. Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All.

Now in thy dazzling half-oped eye, Thy curled nose and lip awry, Uphoisted arms and noddling head, And little chin with crystal spread, Poor helpless thing! what do I see, That I should sing of thee? From thy poor tongue no accents come, Which can but rub thy toothless gum: Small understanding boasts thy face, Thy shapeless limbs nor step nor grace: A few short words thy feats may tell, And yet I love thee well. When wakes the sudden bitter shriek, And redder swells thy little cheek When rattled keys thy woes beguile, And through thine eyelids gleams the smile, Still for thy weakly self is spent Thy little silly plaint. But when thy friends are in distress. Thou’lt laugh and chuckle n’ertheless, Nor with kind sympathy be smitten, Though all are sad but thee and kitten; Yet puny varlet that thou art, Thou twitchest at the heart. Thy smooth round cheek so soft and warm; Thy pinky hand and dimpled arm; Thy silken locks that scantly peep, With gold tipped ends, where circle deep, Around thy neck in harmless grace, So soft and sleekly hold their place, Might harder hearts with kindness fill, And gain our right goodwill. Each passing clown bestows his blessing, Thy mouth is worn with old wives’ kissing; E’en lighter looks the gloomy eye Of surly sense when thou art by; And yet, I think, whoe’er they be, They love thee not like me. Perhaps when time shall add a few Short years to thee, thou’lt love me too; And after that, through life’s long way, Become my sure and cheering stay; Wilt care for me and be my hold, When I am weak and old. Thou’lt listen to my lengthened tale, And pity me when I am frail — But see, the sweepy spinning fly Upon the window takes thine eye. Go to thy little senseless play; Thou dost not heed my lay.

With their harsh leaves old rhododendrons fill The crevices in grave plots’ broken stones. The bees renew the blossoms they destroy, While in the burning air the pines rise still, Commemorating long forgotten biers. Their roots replace the semblance of these bones. The weight of cool, of imperceptible dust That came from nothing and to nothing came Is light within the earth and on the air. The change that so renews itself is just. The enormous, sundry platitude of death Is for these bones, bees, trees, and leaves the same. And splayed upon the ground and through the trees The mountains’ shadow fills and cools the air, Smoothing the shape of headstones to the earth. The rhododendrons suffer with the bees Whose struggles loose ripe petals to the earth, The heaviest burden it shall ever bear. Our hard earned knowledge fits us for such sleep. Although the spring must come, it passes too To form the burden suffered for what comes. Whatever we would give our souls to keep Is merely part of what we call the soul; What we of time would threaten to undo All time in its slow scrutiny has done. For on the grass that starts about the feet The body’s shadow turns, to shape in time, Soon grown preponderant with creeping shade, The final shadow that is turn of earth; And what seems won paid for as in defeat.

Lord’s lost Him His mockingbird, His fancy warbler; Satan sweet-talked her, four bullets hushed her. Who would have thought she’d end that way? Four bullets hushed her. And the world a-clang with evil. Who’s going to make old hardened sinner men tremble now and the righteous rock? Oh who and oh who will sing Jesus down to help with struggling and doing without and being colored all through blue Monday? Till way next Sunday? All those angels in their cretonne clouds and finery the true believer saw when she rared back her head and sang, all those angels are surely weeping. Who would have thought she’d end that way? Four holes in her heart. The gold works wrecked. But she looks so natural in her big bronze coffin among the Broken Hearts and Gates-Ajar, it’s as if any moment she’d lift her head from its pillow of chill gardenias and turn this quiet into shouting Sunday and make folks forget what she did on Monday. Oh, Satan sweet-talked her, and four bullets hushed her. Lord’s lost Him His diva, His fancy warbler’s gone. Who would have thought, who would have thought she’d end that way?

You’re like a little fruit you’re like a moon I want to hold I said lemon slope about your hip because it’s one of my words about you I whispered in bed this smoothing the fruit & then alone with my book but writing in it the pages wagging against my knuckles in the light like a sail.

Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use, Did after him the world seduce; And from the fields the flow’rs and plants allure, Where nature was most plain and pure. He first enclos’d within the garden’s square A dead and standing pool of air; And a more luscious earth for them did knead, Which stupefied them while it fed. The pink grew then as double as his mind; The nutriment did change the kind. With strange perfumes he did the roses taint, And flow’rs themselves were taught to paint. The tulip, white, did for complexion seek, And learn’d to interline its cheek; Its onion root they then so high did hold, That one was for a meadow sold. Another world was search’d, through oceans new, To find the Marvel of Peru. And yet these rarities might be allow’d, To man, that sov’reign thing and proud; Had he not dealt between the bark and tree, Forbidden mixtures there to see. No plant now knew the stock from which it came, He grafts upon the wild the tame; That the uncertain and adult’rate fruit Might put the palate in dispute. His green seraglio has its eunuchs too, Lest any tyrant him out-do; And in the cherry he does nature vex, To procreate without a sex. ’Tis all enforc’d, the fountain and the grot, While the sweet fields do lie forgot; Where willing nature does to all dispense A wild and fragrant innocence; And fauns and fairies do the meadows till, More by their presence than their skill. Their statues polish’d by some ancient hand, May to adorn the gardens stand; But howso’ere the figures do excel, The gods themselves with us do dwell.

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late, And studying all the summer night, Her matchless songs does meditate; Ye country comets, that portend No war nor prince’s funeral, Shining unto no higher end Than to presage the grass’s fall; Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame To wand’ring mowers shows the way, That in the night have lost their aim, And after foolish fires do stray; Your courteous lights in vain you waste, Since Juliana here is come, For she my mind hath so displac’d That I shall never find my home.

There you are, at the gate of the memory palace underneath the rusted teeth of the portcullis, your hand raised in a puzzling gesture— is it farewell, come here, get back, no blame, or are you just trying to hitch a ride? But I’ve seen that gesture when you sleep, as if you were saying to someone, on the one hand . . . on the other hand. Here is a memory to store in the palace— You and I at the circus. The arena is dark except for one blue spotlight. In it, a clown stands before a table. On the table an array, crystal wine glasses filled with different levels of water. He’s dressed in white with a conical hat, tear marks on one cheek. With a wet finger, he plays music that was once forbidden because it made musicians lose their minds. There is a blank look in his eyes and he performs perfectly, as if he were a mechanical clown. Now look up, the lady on the trapeze is dropping large blue crepe-paper flowers. Maybe the palace is the size of a dollhouse and my eye at the window is the eye of a giant. Maybe the palace is in my chest and my heart is beating too loud inside. I remember when I woke but was still asleep and saw my chest rising and falling on its own and then I accidentally rolled out of my body and there were two of me lying side by side. In an alcove shaped like a scallop shell I’ve placed a list of the way lovers have said goodbye. Developer fluid heated up, passed off as consommé, is a standout. As is GOODBYE written in shaving cream on the dusty windows of a row of abandoned cars in Baja. Just as I begin to suspect what is wrong with this picture I notice how lightly you step over the grillwork of the oubliette, that terrible lace under which men are forgotten. You raise your hand again and now I understand that gesture— it’s how you erase the distant mountains, the palace, the sky, everything.