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The shell of objects inwardly consumed Will stand, till some convulsive wind awakes; Such sense hath Fire to waste the heart of things, Nature, such love to hold the form she makes. Thus, wasted joys will show their early bloom, Yet crumble at the breath of a caress; The golden fruitage hides the scathèd bough, Snatch it, thou scatterest wide its emptiness. For pleasure bidden, I went forth last night To where, thick hung, the festal torches gleamed; Here were the flowers, the music, as of old, Almost the very olden time it seemed. For one with cheek unfaded, (though he brings My buried brothers to me, in his look,) Said, Will you dance?' At the accustomed words I gave my hand, the old position took. Sound, gladsome measure! at whose bidding once I felt the flush of pleasure to my brow, While my soul shook the burthen of the flesh, And in its young pride said, Lie lightly thou!' Then, like a gallant swimmer, flinging high My breast against the golden waves of sound, I rode the madd'ning tumult of the dance, Mocking fatigue, that never could be found. Chide not,—it was not vanity, nor sense, (The brutish scorn such vaporous delight,) But Nature, cadencing her joy of strength To the harmonious limits of her right. She gave her impulse to the dancing Hours, To winds that sweep, to stars that noiseless turn; She marked the measure rapid hearts must keep Devised each pace that glancing feet should learn. And sure, that prodigal o'erflow of life, Unvow'd as yet to family or state, Sweet sounds, white garments, flowery coronals Make holy, in the pageant of our fate. Sound, measure! but to stir my heart no more— For, as I moved to join the dizzy race, My youth fell from me; all its blooms were gone, And others showed them, smiling, in my face. Faintly I met the shock of circling forms Linked each to other, Fashion's galley-slaves, Dream-wondering, like an unaccustomed ghost That starts, surprised, to stumble over graves. For graves were 'neath my feet, whose placid masks Smiled out upon my folly mournfully, While all the host of the departed said, Tread lightly—thou art ashes, even as we.'

FERRARA That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said “Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not Her husband’s presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace—all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech—which I have not—to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master’s known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

When I was a troubadour When I was an astronaut When I was a pirate You should have seen my closet You would have loved my shoes. Kindly consider my application Even though your position is filled. This is my stash of snow globes This is my favorite whip This is a picture of me with a macaw This is a song I almost could sing. When I was a freight train When I was a satellite When I was a campfire You should have seen the starburst You should have tasted my tomato. I feel sorry for you I’m unqualified This is my finest tube of toothpaste This is when I rode like the raj on a yak This is the gasoline this is the match. When I was Hegel’s dialectic When I was something Rothko forgot When I was moonlight paving the street You should have seen the roiling shore You should have heard the swarm of bees.

A name trimmed They    are   seated   in    the   shadows with colored husking   corn, shelling   peas. Houses ribbons of wood set in the   ground.   I try to find the spot at which the pattern on the   floor   repeats.   Pink,   and rosy, quartz. They   wade   in brackish water. The    leaves    outside    the window tricked the eye, demanding that one see them, focus on them, making it impossible to   look   past   them, and though holes were opened through the foliage, they were as useless as port- holes underwater looking into a dark sea, which only reflects the room one seeks to look out from. Sometimes into benevolent and other times into ghastly shapes. It speaks of a few of the rather terrible blind. I grew stubborn until blue as the eyes overlooking the bay from the bridge scattered over its bowls through a fading light and backed by the protest of the bright breathless West. Each bit of jello had been molded in tiny doll dishes, each trembling orange bit a different shape, but all otherwise the same. I am urged out rummaging into the sunshine, and the depths increase of blue above. A paper hat afloat on a cone of water. The orange and gray bugs were linked from their mating but faced in opposite directions, and their scrambling amounted to nothing. This simply means that the imagination is more restless than the body. But, already, words. Can there be laughter without comparisons. The tongue lisps in its hilarious panic. If, for ex- ample, you say, “I always prefer being by myself,”   and, then, one afternoon, you want to telephone a friend, maybe you feel you have betrayed your ideals. We have poured into the sink the stale water in which the iris died. Life is hopelessly frayed, all loose ends. A pansy suddenly, a web, a trail remarkably’s a snail’s. It was an enormous egg, sitting in the vineyard—an enormous rock-shaped egg. On that still day my grandmother raked up the leaves beside a particular pelargonium. With a name like that there is a lot you can do. Children are not always inclined to choose such paths. You can tell by the eucalyptus tree, its shaggy branches scatter buttons. In the afternoons, when the shades were pulled for my nap, the light coming through was of a dark yellow, near- ly orange, melancholy, as heavy as honey, and it made me thirsty. That doesn’t say it all, nor even a greater part. Yet it seems even more incomplete when we were there in person. Half the day in half the room. The wool makes one itch and the scratching makes one warm. But herself that she obeyed she dressed. It talks. The baby is scrubbed everywhere, he is an apple. They are true kitchen stalwarts. The smell of breathing fish and breathing shells seems sad, a mystery, rap- turous, then dead. A self-centered being, in this different world. A urinating doll, half-buried in sand. She is lying on her stomach with one eye closed, driving a toy truck along the road she has cleared with her fingers. I mean untroubled by the distortions. That was the fashion when she was a young woman and famed for her beauty, surrounded by beaux. Once it was circular and that shape can still be seen from the air. Protected by the dog. Protected by foghorns, frog honks, cricket circles on the brown hills. It was a message of happiness by which we were called into the room, as if to receive a birthday present given early, because it was too large to hide, or alive, a pony perhaps, his mane trimmed with colored ribbons.

I Because I was born in a kingdom, there was a king. At times the king was a despot; at other times, not. Axes flashed in the road at night, but if you closed your eyes and sang the old ballads sitting on the well edge amongst your kinspeople then the silver did not appear to be broken. Such were the circumstances. They made a liar out of me. Did they change my spirit? Kith in the night the sound of owls. A bird fight. II We also had a queen, whetted by the moon. And we her subjects, softening in her sight. III What one had the other had to have too. Soon parrots bloomed in every garden, and every daughter had a tuning fork jeweled with emeralds. IV Learning to hunt in the new empire, the king invited his subjects to send him their knives. He tested these knives on oranges, pomegranates, acorn squash, soft birches, stillborns, prisoners who had broken rules. He used them on the teeth of traitors. V When strangers massed at the borders, the courtiers practiced subjection of the foreign. The court held a procession of twine, rope, gold, knife, light, and prostitutes with their vials of white powder. Smoke coursed into the courtyard, and we wrought hunger upon the bodies of strangers. I am sure you can imagine it, really what need is there for me to tell you? You were a stranger once too, and I brought rope. VI Afterward, I always slept, and let the dealers come to me alone with jewels. VII In the court at night, we debated the skin of language, questioned what might one day be revealed inside: a pink and soft fruit, a woman in a field. . . Or a shadow, sticky and loose as old jam. Our own dialect was abstract, we wished to understand not how things were but what spectacle we might make from them. VIII One day a merchant brought moving pictures, the emperor's new delight. He tacked dark cloth to all the windows, top and bottom, and turned the lights off, cranking the machine like a needle and thread making forms into which we could insinuate our cold bodies and find warmth. Light; dark. And the sliding images of courtiers merrily balancing pineapples on their heads, as if this were an adequate story. IX And our queen, that hidden self. What became of her? Slid into the night like a statue, and felt around into shadows, nothing to prove, all worldly latitudes, knowing as a spider in retreat. The web her mind, and in it, the fly. X On Sundays, we flew kites to ensure our joy was seen by all those who threatened to threaten us. The thread spooling out up high in the purple sky and silver gelatin films being made, sliding through the cranking machine so that the barbarians could know we made images of ourselves coated in precious metal and sent them away indifferent to our wealth. I miss the citrus smell of spring on the plaza filled with young and long-limbed kite flyers. XI Do I have anything else to add? Only that I obeyed my king, my kind, I was not faithless. Should I be punished for that? It is true some of my pictures creak unhappily through the spindle. It is true one day they came to my house. I know the powder we coated our fingers with made us thirsty and sometimes cruel. But I was born with a spirit like you. I have woken, you see, and I wish to be made new.

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun - In Corners - till a Day The Owner passed - identified - And carried Me away - And now We roam in Sovreign Woods - And now We hunt the Doe - And every time I speak for Him The Mountains straight reply - And do I smile, such cordial light Opon the Valley glow - It is as a Vesuvian face Had let it’s pleasure through - And when at Night - Our good Day done - I guard My Master’s Head - ’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s Deep Pillow - to have shared - To foe of His - I’m deadly foe - None stir the second time - On whom I lay a Yellow Eye - Or an emphatic Thumb - Though I than He - may longer live He longer must - than I - For I have but the power to kill, Without - the power to die -

Reason looks for Where I woke and was awake, in the two, then room fitting the wall, withdrawn, I arranges it had my desk and thus my corner. from there While waiting, waltz. The soles of our boots wear thin, but the soles of our feet grow thick. The difference between “he presented his argument” and “they had an argument.”   I still respond to the academic year, the sound of the school bell, the hot Wednesday morn- ing after Labor Day. Must the physiologist stand apart from the philosopher. We are not forgetting the patience of the mad, their love of detail. The sudden brief early morning breeze, the first indication of a day‘s palpability, stays high in the trees, while flashing silver and green the leaves flutter, a bird sweeps from one branch to another, the indistinct shadows lift off the crumpled weeds, smoke rises from the gravel quarry——all this is metonymy. The “argument”   is the plot, proved by the book. Going forward and coming back later. Even posterity, alas, will know Sears. As for we who “love to be astonished,” there are fences keeping cyclones. Might be covered, on the ground, by no distance. She spread her fingers as she spoke, talking of artifice, which extends beauty beyond nature. Perhaps it is only a coincidence. For, as Neitzsche put it, “If a man has character, he will have the same experience over and over again.” In the morning at eight I sense the first threat of monotony. Give a penny with a knife. Candor is the high pitch of scrutiny. I was tired of ideas, or, rather, the activity of ideas, a kind of exercise, had first invigorated me and then made me sleepy, so that I felt just as one does after a long, early morning walk, returning unable to decide whether to drink more coffee or go back to sleep. The uncommon run of keeping oneself to oneself. The piggy-back plant is o.k. Tell anyone who telephones that I’m not home. I liked doing that, had made rooms for dolls on trucks that way, looking in on them through windows. It was a pretense of keeping our distance from anything that ap- peared pretentious. A sorry mess, but well-framed. As if a contorted checkerboard formed the portrait of a handsome woman in a hat of several ochres and umbers. The dog circles more than a moth before resting. Let the traffic pass. They were on vacation and therefore bored. Someone wanted to go away from everywhere forever but jumped into the bay. We were warned such accidents happen while mothers talk on phones. A doodled gnarled tree. Milk belongs to the mythology of cats but it makes them sick. Ours was a stray with ringworm. One night each year on Boston’s Beacon Hill the curtains remained undrawn and the public was invited to peek in. I didn’t wear my dark glasses because I didn’t want a raccoon tan. Yet this needs shading in. It seemed that I didn’t, after all, want a birthday empty of sentimentality. It’s on the compulsive buyer’s rack up front. The real adversary of my determination was determinism, regulating and limiting the range and degree of difference between things of one day and things of the next. I got it from Darwin, Freud, and Marx. Not fragments but metonymy. Duration. Language makes tracks.

Come, O come, my life’s delight, Let me not in languor pine! Love loves no delay; thy sight, The more enjoyed, the more divine: O come, and take from me The pain of being deprived of thee! Thou all sweetness dost enclose, Like a little world of bliss. Beauty guards thy looks: the rose In them pure and eternal is. Come, then, and make thy flight As swift to me, as heavenly light.

It doesn’t take the full-wind sickness, just the mere, the constant threat of it, just the salt trace, its faint knocking to bring the spirits of chance and chaos into this house - they stand in doorways: quaint, foul allies, swivelling their ghost hips, tugging at their gowns of transparency and mischief. They buzz me with lust, and I’m undone. Remember these: the Cupid who ducked up from behind a wall and aimed an arrow, one evening on Broughton Street; whatever grabbed my shoulder at Earlshall; a sound of heavy boxes pushed up and down the empty hallway; the past is the self’s ghoul. What is it, Roddy, you know you’ve blocked out? What left your brain so empty that it gushed full with circus music and the safe bet of trivia? Here I am swinging on the fence of fences, in limbo, where the other world loves to try my pragmatism and it’s I who have invited them, summoned by this self-indulgent ouija. But what is it that folds my clothes as I sleep and leaves them on the edge of the bed? Who hides my slippers, re-hangs the paintings?Deja vu. Did a minor goddess filch me in Manila and follow me home, prone, as they are, to easy-led mortal men. And I’m easy, easy. So, come now, teach me to believe in the soul. Hurt me with the truth. Press me back down on this cheap, wine-coloured carpet; let me know for once and for all how fucked I am.

Often I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town, And my youth comes back to me. And a verse of a Lapland song Is haunting my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, And catch, in sudden gleams, The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, And islands that were the Hesperides Of all my boyish dreams. And the burden of that old song, It murmurs and whispers still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the black wharves and the slips, And the sea-tides tossing free; And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, And the beauty and mystery of the ships, And the magic of the sea. And the voice of that wayward song Is singing and saying still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill; The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er, And the bugle wild and shrill. And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the sea-fight far away, How it thundered o'er the tide! And the dead captains, as they lay In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay, Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I can see the breezy dome of groves, The shadows of Deering's Woods; And the friendships old and the early loves Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves In quiet neighborhoods. And the verse of that sweet old song, It flutters and murmurs still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." I remember the gleams and glooms that dart Across the school-boy's brain; The song and the silence in the heart, That in part are prophecies, and in part Are longings wild and vain. And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. And the words of that fatal song Come over me like a chill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Strange to me now are the forms I meet When I visit the dear old town; But the native air is pure and sweet, And the trees that o'ershadow each well-known street, As they balance up and down, Are singing the beautiful song, Are sighing and whispering still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, And with joy that is almost pain My heart goes back to wander there, And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again. And the strange and beautiful song, The groves are repeating it still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."