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1 The angel — three years we waited for him, attention riveted, closely scanning the pines the shore the stars. One with the blade of the plough or the ship’s keel we were searching to find once more the first seed so that the age-old drama could begin again. We returned to our homes broken, limbs incapable, mouths cracked by the tastes of rust and brine. when we woke we traveled towards the north, strangers plunged into mist by the immaculate wings of swans that wounded us. On winter nights the strong wind from the east maddened us, in the summers we were lost in the agony of days that couldn’t die. We brought back these carved reliefs of a humble art. 2 Still one more well inside a cave. It used to be easy for us to draw up idols and ornaments to please those friends who still remained loyal to us. The ropes have broken; only the grooves on the well’s lip remind us of our past happiness: the fingers on the rim, as the poet put it. The fingers feel the coolness of the stone a little, Then the body’s fever prevails over it and the cave stakes its soul and loses it every moment, full of silence, without a drop of water. 3 Remember the baths where you were murdered I woke with this marble head in my hands; it exhausts my elbow and I don’t know where to put it down. It was falling into the dream as I was coming out of the dream so our life became one and it will be very difficult for it to separate again. I look at the eyes: neither open nor closed I speak to the mouth which keeps trying to speak I hold the cheeks which have broken through the skin. That’s all I’m able to do. My hands disappear and come towards me mutilated. 4 Argonauts And a soul if it is to know itself must look into its own soul: the stranger and enemy, we’ve seen him in the mirror. They were good, the companions, they didn’t complain about the work or the thirst or the frost, they had the bearing of trees and waves that accept the wind and the rain accept the night and the sun without changing in the midst of change. They were fine, whole days they sweated at the oars with lowered eyes breathing in rhythm and their blood reddened a submissive skin. Sometimes they sang, with lowered eyes as we were passing the deserted island with the Barbary figs to the west, beyond the cape of the dogs that bark. If it is to know itself, they said it must look into its own soul, they said and the oar’s struck the sea’s gold in the sunset. We went past many capes many islands the sea leading to another sea, gulls and seals. Sometimes disconsolate women wept lamenting their lost children and others frantic sought Alexander the Great and glories buried in the depths of Asia. We moored on shores full of night-scenes, the birds singing, with waters that left on the hands the memory of a great happiness. But the voyages did not end. Their souls became one with the oars and the oarlocks with the solemn face of the prow with the rudder’s wake with the water that shattered their image. The companions died one by one, with lowered eyes. Their oars mark the place where they sleep on the shore. No one remembers them. Justice 5 We didn’t know them deep down it was hope that said we’d known them since early childhood. We saw them perhaps twice and then they took to the ships: cargoes of coal, cargoes of grain, and our friends lost beyond the ocean forever. Dawn finds us beside the tired lamp drawing on paper, awkwardly, painfully, ships mermaids or sea shells; at dusk we go down to the river because it shows us the way to the sea; and we spend the nights in cellars that smell of tar. Our friends have left us perhaps we never saw them, perhaps we met them when sleep still brought us close to the breathing wave perhaps we search for them because we search for the other life, beyond the statues. 6 M.R. The garden with its fountains in the rain you will see only from behind the clouded glass of the low window. Your room will be lit only by the flames from the fireplace and sometimes the distant lightning will reveal the wrinkles on your forehead, my old Friend. The garden with the fountains that in your hands was a rhythm of the other life, beyond the broken statues and the tragic columns and a dance among the oleanders near the new quarries — misty glass will have cut it off from your life. You won’t breathe; earth and the sap of the trees will spring from your memory to strike this window struck by rain from the outside world. 7 South wind Westward the sea merges with a mountain range. From our left the south wind blows and drives us mad, the kind of wind that strips bones of their flesh. Our house among pines and carobs. Large windows. Large tables for writing you the letters we’ve been writing so many months now, dropping them into the space between us in order to fill it up. Star of dawn, when you lowered your eyes our hours were sweeter than oil on a wound, more joyful than cold water to the palate, more peaceful than a swan’s wings. You held our life in the palm of your hand. After the bitter bread of exile, at night if we remain in front of the white wall your voice approaches us like the hope of fire; and again this wind hones a razor against our nerves. Each of us writes you the same thing and each falls silent in the other’s presence, watching, each of us, the same world separately the light and darkness on the mountain range and you. Who will lift this sorrow from our hearts? Yesterday evening a heavy rain and again today the covered sky burdens us. Our thoughts – like the pine needles of yesterday’s downpour bunched up and useless in front of our doorway — would build a collapsing tower. Among these decimated villages on this promontory, open to the south wind with the mountain range in front of us hiding you, who will appraise for us the sentence to oblivion? Who will accept our offering, at this close of autumn? 8 What are they after, our souls, travelling on the decks of decayed ships crowded in with sallow women and crying babies unable to forget themselves either with the flying fish or with the stars that the masts point our at their tips; grated by gramophone records committed to non-existent pilgrimages unwillingly murmuring broken thoughts from foreign languages. What are they after, our souls, travelling on rotten brine-soaked timbers from harbour to harbour? Shifting broken stones, breathing in the pine’s coolness with greater difficulty each day, swimming in the waters of this sea and of that sea, without the sense of touch without men in a country that is no longer ours nor yours. We knew that the islands were beautiful somewhere round about here where we grope, slightly lower down or slightly higher up, a tiny space. 9 The harbour is old, I can’t wait any longer for the friend who left the island with the pine trees for the friend who left the island with the plane trees for the friend who left for the open sea. I stroke the rusted cannons, I stroke the oars so that my body may revive and decide. The sails give off only the smell of salt from the other storm. If I chose to remain alone, what I longed for was solitude, not this kind of waiting, my soul shattered on the horizon, these lines, these colours, this silence. The night’s stars take me back to Odysseus, to his anticipation of the dead among the asphodels. When we moored here we hoped to find among the asphodels the gorge that knew the wounded Adonis. 10 Our country is closed in, all mountains that day and night have the low sky as their roof. We have no rivers, we have no wells, we have no springs, only a few cisterns — and these empty — that echo, and that we worship. A stagnant hollow sound, the same as our loneliness the same as our love, the same as our bodies. We find it strange that once we were able to build our houses, huts and sheep-folds. And our marriages, the cool coronals and the fingers, become enigmas inexplicable to our soul. How were our children born, how did they grow strong? Our country is closed in. The two black Symplegades close it in. When we go down to the harbours on Sunday to breathe freely we see, lit in the sunset, the broken planks from voyages that never ended, bodies that no longer know how to love. 11 Sometimes your blood froze like the moon in the limitless night your blood spread its white wings over the black rocks, the shapes of trees and houses, with a little light from our childhood years. 12 Bottle in the sea Three rocks, a few burnt pines, a lone chapel and farther above the same landscape repeated starts again: three rocks in the shape of a gateway, rusted, a few burnt pines, black and yellow, and a square hut buried in whitewash; and still farther above, many times over, the same landscape recurs level after level to the horizon, to the twilit sky. Here we moored the ship to splice the broken oars, to drink water and to sleep. The sea that embittered us is deep and unexplored and unfolds a boundless calm. Here among the pebbles we found a coin and threw dice for it. The youngest won it and disappeared. We put to sea again with our broken oars. 13 Hydra Dolphins banners and the sound of cannons. The sea once so bitter to your soul bore the many-coloured and glittering ships it swayed, rolled and tossed them, all blue with white wings, once so bitter to your soul now full of colours in the sun. White sails and sunlight and wet oars struck with a rhythm of drums on stilled waves. Your eyes, watching, would be beautiful, your arms, reaching out, would glow, your lips would come alive, as they used to, at such a miracle: that’s what you were looking for what were you looking for in front of ashes or in the rain in the fog in the wind even when the lights were growing dim and the city was sinking and on the stone pavement the Nazarene showed you his heart, what were you looking for? why don’t you come? what were you looking for? 14 Three red pigeons in the light inscribing our fate in the light with colours and gestures of people we once loved. 15 Quid πλατανων opacissimus Sleep wrapped you in green leaves like a tree you breathed like a tree in the quiet light in the limpid spring I looked at your face: eyelids closed, eyelashes brushing the water. In the soft grass my fingers found your fingers I held your pulse a moment and felt elsewhere your heart’s pain. Under the plane tree, near the water, among laurel sleep moved you and scattered you around me, near me, without my being able to touch the whole of you — one as you were with your silence; seeing your shadow grow and diminish, lose itself in the other shadows, in the other world that let you go yet held you back. The life that they gave us to live, we lived. Pity those who wait with such patience lost in the black laurel under the heavy plane trees and those, alone, who speak to cisterns and wells and drown in the voice’s circles. Pity the companion who shared our privation and our sweat and plunged into the sun like a crow beyond the ruins, without hope of enjoying our reward. Give us, outside sleep, serenity. 16 The name is Orestes On the track, once more on the track, on the track, how many times around, how many blood-stained laps, how many black rows; the people who watch me, who watched me when, in the chariot, I raised my hand glorious, and they roared triumphantly. The froth of the horses strikes me, when will the horses tire? The axle creaks, the axle burns, when will the axle burst into flame? When will the reins break, when will the hooves tread flush on the ground on the soft grass, among the poppies where, in the spring, you picked a daisy. They were lovely, your eyes, but you didn’t know where to look nor did I know where to look, I, without a country, I who go on struggling here, how many times around? and I feel my knees give way over the axle over the wheels, over the wild track knees buckle easily when the gods so will it, no one can escape, what use is strength, you can’t escape the sea that cradled you and that you search for at this time of trial, with the horses panting, with the reeds that used to sing in autumn to the Lydian mode the sea you cannot find no matter how you run no matter how you circle past the black, bored Eumenides, unforgiven. 17 Astyanax Now that you are leaving, take the boy with you as well, the boy who saw the light under the plane tree, one day when trumpets resounded and weapons shone and the sweating horses bent to the trough to touch with wet nostrils the green surface of the water. The olive trees with the wrinkles of our fathers the rocks with the wisdom of our fathers and our brother’s blood alive on the earth were a vital joy, a rich pattern for the souls who knew their prayer. Now that you are leaving, now that the day of payment dawns, now that no one knows whom he will kill and how he will die, take with you the boy who saw the light under the leaves of that plane tree and teach him to study the trees. 18 I regret having let a broad river slip through my fingers without drinking a single drop. Now I’m sinking into the stone. A small pine tree in the red soil is all the company I have. Whatever I loved vanished with the houses that were new last summer and crumbled in the winds of autumn. 19 Even if the wind blows it doesn’t cool us and the shade is meagre under the cypress trees and all around slopes ascending to the mountains; they’re a burden for us the friends who no longer know how to die. 20 In my breast the wound opens again when the stars descend and become kin to my body when silence falls under the footsteps of men. These stones sinking into time, how far will they drag me with them? The sea, the sea, who will be able to drain it dry? I see the hands beckon each drawn to the vulture and the hawk bound as I am to the rock that suffering has made mine, I see the trees breathing the black serenity of the dead and then the smiles, so static, of the statues. 21 We who set out on this pilgrimage looked at the broken statues became distracted and said that life is not so easily lost that death has unexplored paths and its own particular justice; that while we, still upright on our feet, are dying, affiliated in stone united in hardness and weakness, the ancient dead have escaped the circle and risen again and smile in a strange silence. 22 So very much having passed before our eyes that even our eyes saw nothing, but beyond and behind was memory like the white sheet one night in an enclosure where we saw strange visions, even stranger than you, pass by and vanish into the motionless foliage of a pepper tree; having known this fate of ours so well wandering among broken stones, three or six thousand years searching in collapsed buildings that might have been our homes trying to remember dates and heroic deeds: will we be able? having been bound and scattered, having struggled, as they said, with non-existent difficulties lost, then finding again a road full of blind regiments sinking in marshes and in the lake of Marathon, will we be able to die as we should? 23 A little farther we will see the almond trees blossoming the marble gleaming in the sun the sea breaking into waves a little farther, let us rise a little higher. 24 Here end the works of the sea, the works of love. Those who will some day live here where we end — should the blood happen to darken in their memory and overflow — let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels, let them turn the heads of the victims towards Erebus: We who had nothing will school them in serenity.

Aluminum sky. Only November Leaks into early frost Like a ruptured jug Of gas. I’d rather hold Onto this road with pliers Than have another face of you Frisk my heart. Cool hands, The touch of every moon Is crucial and incomplete As a sponge bath. Leaving A backbone of lights Behind me, a blinking string Of pelts in fox country, I long to slice through Connecticut’s middle, marbled And pink as medium-rare beef. I dream you.

I. The question is not how like the animals we are But how we got that way. We laugh, for what is a suicide note But the epitaph of an emotion? Few of us die out in the open; And when you say thesis, I say antithesis, But we don’t stop there: we take our opposing ideas, Plant them on opposing cliffs and then build a footbridge Between them, seemingly flimsy yet sturdy enough in fact To support a battalion. Hidden behind trees, we watch The soldiers march across it, single file, too scared To look down. We cheer them all, all except the boy In the fairy tale who knew no fear. Him we pity. He laughs open-eyed, ready to die as we were not. He is one of us, all right, but better, stronger, stranger. He asks for more fear than anyone can bear. II. The guilty had three choices: awkward chords of candor, Canned laughter, or the wild hyacinth’s sutra, before Silence returned triumphant, and the journey resumed In darkness, though the sky above was classically blue. Everyone kept his opinion to himself As harmony dictated, and effigies of Tristan and Isolde Accompanied their stubborn footsteps across the wild Terrain. Yet the longing for a loud catharsis At night renewed their pain. “If only we could climb Out of these clouds and heartfelt headaches, Like ravished children in the glory of a snowball fight After school, and never again have to descend, Who would not abandon these erotic shipwrecks And fall asleep like tigers in the destined heights?” III. At a festival of conceptual art in Cairo, I saw a tank buried entirely in snow. I knew then that silence is the source Of all music, all laughter, all thought, and so I stuffed pebbles in my mouth and stood by the sea And roared my defiance of the waves. It was here, Years before, that our plane and its shadow Converged: I ran from the fire, carrying the flames In my arms. I ran and ran, feeling like a man Fighting a newspaper on a windy beach, but it wasn’t A beach at all: the sand beneath me was snow, Is snow, and the spears in the desert sky look like stars. In the pyramid’s triangular shadow, I was the man Who heard the crimson explosion, and ran. And ran. IV. Keats in one of his letters says, “My Imagination Is a Monastery and I am its Monk.” I wonder. If a man’s imagination is his monastery, This place looks a lot like an empty railway station, King’s Cross in London or the Gare St. Lazare in Paris, A place whose smoke and fog Monet dissolved Into a chorus of colors. There we stood, my love and I, Having made our vows under the suspended clock, Hero and bride. But as we walked away, side by side, Down the station’s sunless nave, amid the excitement Of the crowd, and foreign languages spoken loud, We knew our exile had already begun, could hear The conductor’s shrill whistle, could see the light At the end of the tunnel, where the battlefields begin. V. Paradise was hardly what Psyche With her bleeding blackberries and nervous orgasms Could have foretold, enjoyed, And renounced for the sake of some querulous abstraction Designed to keep us unhappy but alive. Call it civilization. Call our disobedience instinctive. Or say we obeyed an angry muse, who ordered us to dance. “Or else?” I asked. She sighed before answering. “Or else a dismal armchair will be your lot With chamber music your sole narcotic—music that will make You face your former self, and grieve over incidents Scarcely recalled, and eat without pleasure, and drink Without thirst, and dread what shall never come to pass.” In the revelation of our nakedness, we danced. VI. “A ball that is caught is fuller, by the weight Of its return, than the same ball thrown.” Our empty hands say so. We feel free. In the other room the true believers remain, The ones who insist that evil is real, the only real thing. Cannibals and missionaries they are, accomplices in sin, Greedy for punishment, to inflict or endure it. We are glad to leave them behind, glad not to have to hear Their chants and wails. Down the elevator we go And out into the canyon created by skyscraper shadows. Yet even we, dedicated as we are to good living, Sometimes walk around with a lost look on our faces, As if the blessing for a piece of fruit or cup of wine Had suddenly come to mind, though cup and plate are empty; Had come to mind and faded almost instantly away. VII. Admit it: you used to walk around thinking there had To be a reason for things, for everything. That way Paranoia lies. Not a science of syllables, the solitude Total, but the prophet’s lit lantern was what you wanted— And what you got was “neon in daylight,” a pleasure Recommended by Frank O’Hara. Those pleasures meant a lot to you, You even thought you lived for them, until the first death (A nervous uncle broke the news when you landed at Kennedy) And the first marriage (you stayed up all night and read Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a fair description Of your lovemaking). It seems that new myths are needed And consumed all the time by folks like you. Each erases the last, Producing tomorrow’s tabula rasa, after a night of dreams In which the tigers of wrath become the tigers of repose. VIII. Go back to the beginning, to the first fist fight. They played for high stakes those days. The penalty for losing Was death or slavery, take your pick. To spare a life Was the mark of the master; the mark of his slave Was fear. Noble savage, nothing. Forget about paradise. My vote goes to Hobbes’s “life of man, solitary, poor, Nasty, brutish, and short.” An amazing sentence: The syllable that ends it also lends it its poignancy, Since we go on wanting what we can scarcely bear. Go back, go back, back to when god became a swan With beautiful wounded wings, and raped the astonished maiden. Back to the dream that stays real when you wake up, Accustomed to your hunger and clinging to it, Like a panther accustomed to his cage. Go back. IX. A slap in the face, and the face burns with shame. Anger comes later, comes stranger, looking for someone to blame. End of message. Can’t see the stars; Can’t say anything that hasn’t been said before By somebody slamming the door; can only repeat The syntax that brought the crowd to its feet In the silence that appeased the nightingale. End of tale. But its moral was simple: I lost the hearing in one of my ears And listened with the other to a deaf man’s Symphony. He built a heaven out of his fears That there wasn’t one. End of nightmare. —The imperfect past, going by too fast, Begged us to collect it. It couldn’t last. X. The doctor put his cards on the table. “Take your pick,” he said. He was able To offer me fear of extinction or fear of pain, Though freedom from neither. “You mustn’t complain.” In the vertiginous air, the monks wore masks To keep their germs to themselves and their Identities a secret. A hero to his own valet, The Sultan choreographed his murderous ballet Until Scheherazade, entering the circus tent With John the Baptist’s head on a silver tray, Told her tale and made the crowd repent. The curtain dropped and the crowd went on its way, But no one could say what the nightmare meant, Or why it was sent to us, or by whom it was sent. XI. You can’t have it, so you want it, or You couldn’t have it, so you no longer want it, or You’re stuck with it, forever. It was designed with you in mind, Like the locked door that swung open majestically when you Spoke the magic words or just answered in the affirmative when Your name was called. “Here I am, ready to meet you, Ready to make any sacrifice,” you said, Still in bed, wrestling with an evil angel In your sleep. You were seventeen years old then And woke up with a limp. Desire is like that: The girl knows what you want and cries when She gives it to you because it was yours because She whispered your name in your sleeping ear And said: “Here I am.” And was gone a minute later. XII. I met her in one of those sleazebag bars— I think it was called The Bottom Line—in Buffalo, Self-proclaimed “city of no illusions,” where Silent men in shirtsleeves sit on bar stools and watch Girls with tattoos on their buttocks strip Down to g-strings and panties. They dance to the thump Of moronic music, grind and hump under hot strobe lights, And then, when the act is over, circulate among the scumbags, Gyrating in front of each in turn, making each feel special, And each, aroused by the mingled smell of musk and sweat, Folds a dollar and sticks it into her crotch for a tip. She was different. When I left the bar that night I knew She would follow, and she did, and I never looked back, never Glanced at the rear-view mirror. All other women turned into her. XIII. Her name was Mary but was Miriam before that and soon She will change it to Alice. What she offered was a shadow The shape of Europe on the map above the bed of my youth. Her shawl is all that remains of Europe in the downstairs closet. It was forbidden to lift up her skirt and look, look. Yet boys and girls danced across the bridal morning like a bridge As the wings of the fog like white sails lingered Across the bay. I flew, like a caterpillar with wings, into a new day. That was the day we buried Europe. We built a dome in air And in the icy silence of the tomb. To hang like a spider On a subway strap seemed a suitable fate for some, but we Lit a candle and watched it cast the shadow of a mountain In a valley. It was the awful shadow of some unseen power, A heaven in a wild flower. Europe, bloody Europe was gone. XIV. In the dream of your choice, you wake up In the Garden of Eden, alone except for a whore with a heart, Wearing a nurse’s uniform. The serpent says: Listen carefully. This is for your own good. At the tone it will be eight o’clock. Nine out of ten physicians recommend That you surround yourself with the kind of sorrows That can be instantly relieved by frivolous kisses, With vegetables as lush as fruits Ripening in your hands. When the hospital gates are opened, Don’t hesitate, run! And when you arrive at last in the land Of the free, take your place in line with all of the others As though nothing had happened between then and now To make you doubt the conviction that you’re blessed. XV. If you were a painter, you’d paint the wind Green. It would shake the boughs of the honey locust trees. It would chase the leaves across the continent. It would scatter their crumbs in a twist of swirling snow. It would be colorless and green at the same time, The wind that aligns the pond and the cloud, The wind that is everywhere, in constant motion, As buoyant as Ariel and as scornful of gross Caliban, The wind that holds up the fly ball, drives it back Into fair territory, causes it to drift within reach Of the right-fielder, who waves off the second baseman, Until a last gust lifts the ball over both their heads And it lands safely for the double that ends the game In extra innings, costing our team the pennant. XVI. After the flood, refreshed, was the first time You realized that the road to truth was the road Of flagrant fiction. You surrounded yourself With symbols (a mountain, a window, an ark, A rainbow) and mythic creatures (the dove that returned And the raven that didn’t). You understood the dream Of the old woman who interpreted the sailor’s dream. Then came the other birds, the clouds that come When the rain is done, and the wind that signals The discovery of dry land, a new continent, As the report of a gun sounds the start of the race, As the bottle broken beneath the bridegroom’s foot Begins the marriage, as church bells start the funeral Parade and all the townspeople march in the procession. XVII. No longer is there freedom in confusion, Nor forgiveness in confession, Nor charm in the old illusion Of moonlight, the tower, the howling dog, the escaping lovers, Escaping into midnight in the Western hemisphere, When the possibilities of expansion still seemed limitless And the soul could choose among stars without number In the vast velvet night without end. —In the midst of other woe than ours, I went to the window And cured the solitude of the listeners outside Who shivered in the rain, waiting for the police to come And ambulance sirens to sound. Drunk I was when I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and said, “Dad, Dad, is that you?” In the terror of the night. XVIII. “Wherever you follow,” he said, “I will lead.” Where summer met fall, she picked up a brittle orange leaf. He wanted to lie on the grass, to lean and loaf At his ease, but the crisis intervened: news of her unpaid loan Prompted him to put his sandals on his head, as in the Zen koan. Slowly he walked away. Silence followed, then the sound of a moan In the room next door. So orange it seemed a painted moon Shone against the indigo sky. And quickly her mood Went from unreasonable euphoria to realistic dejection, as the wood In the fireplace turned to ash without first yielding a flame. The wool Of their sweaters had begun to unravel. “If the fool Persists in his folly,“ someone said, “he will have food Enough to eat, loaves and fishes galore. Worship the good, Which is beautiful though untrue. Turn your back on gold.” XIX. If we were painters we’d favor vibrant stripes, Primary colors, flat surfaces, a lot of white Remaining on the canvas. If we were composers We’d take the music of exotic jungles with us When we visit the vast vacant tundra. “If I were Rich enough,” vowed the philanthropist, “I’d move To a magnolia mansion and spend my days Translating modern literature into ancient Greek.” Great plans, distant vistas, a rearguard action To sabotage the present—and here we’ve all assembled, At the antiseptic airport, with haunted looks on our faces. Occasional eye contact between man with tan and woman in white. “You look like your voice,” she says, breaking the silence. The rest of us know where we’re going, but we don’t know when. XX. They’ve cornered the market on moral outrage. Yes, they have. The more noise they make about it, the more nervous we get. They’re always telling us just how shallow we are. The only convictions we have, they say, are on our driver’s licenses. The charge is not entirely fair to us, though it has its grain of truth. We tend to luxuriate in our indecisiveness. Not they. No one can say They lack conviction and passion and certitude. We have our doubts, Which make us less glamorous and give us The haunted look we wear. But something in defense Of our bemused spectatorship must be said: at least it spares us The postures of those hypocrite lechers, brothers and others Who sublimate their sexuality into opulent rhetoric and chide us For not doing the same. They have our best interests at heart. They may even be happier than we are. We have our doubts. XXI. Today’s graffiti is in the sky: “More than meets the eye.” Growing up I could tell the months by their smell. First come the fruitstand smells of spring in the city, Then the backyard trees get back their green, and we know It’s the real thing. Poetry is this puzzle of missing parts Is best represented by clouds in the early evening sky, Because they constantly change shape, are utterly indifferent To us, and seem both remote and near at hand At once. The creation of the world is a ballet With the dancers and music missing: what you see Is a miniature stage-set in a museum display case, And then suddenly you are walking in it, along the Boulevard Raspail, Until the Eiffel Tower comes into view. Watch it organize The bridges of the Seine into a coherent surprise. XXII. Love accompanies the stranger to his streetlamp Encircled by signing insects. The song he hears Meant doom or wax in the mariners’ ears. And now, as the smell of fresh cut grass gives way to the smell Of brown leaves burning, I want to tell You what I heard that night, and how the day Erased it: I woke to the rattle of a passing car Which, accelerating up the rapidly rising ramp, Seemed delighted with its capacity for making noise. From far away I could hear it coming. And just as we know that fame isn’t all It’s cracked up to be, that it can be downright Nasty in fact, and yet we want it anyway, So I, too, knew I belonged in one of those cars, tall Behind the steering wheel, racing to meet the changing light. XXIII. Winter came last. Waves of snow from who knows which wind Turned the meadow beside the frozen waterfall Into an ocean. The boy in the fairy tale who knew no fear Soon learned. On the shore of the wide world he could hear The violins of anger, spelling danger. Poetry in this era of disbelief Meant staring at a leaf until it turned into a star. It was easier in the past. All you had to do was sleep outside And let nature take over. There were more stars in the sky Than we had room for in our philosophy. And when we woke, Berries grew beside the burbling brook and bled in our soft hands. The question was not how like the gods we were But whether we could recognize them in our sleep And remember what we had seen, remember them clearly, When the radio alarm welcomes us into its next musical day. XXIV. I live in a boat in front of the door Depicting the gods as they might have been forgotten By Lazarus during the tortures of interrogation. What I see are tombs and yellow stains on the snow. Instead of quotations, I will refer to my heart, Instead of an altar, I will guard the munitions And drink wine with the sour taste of cork And eat sour strawberries in the city of New York. You who’ve been looking for a lost address, And mothers who seem to be fighting back their tears, What made you think you could resist the roar Of the years as they echo in a cavernous subway station? Can you see the boat in front of the door? What was it you forgot during the interrogation? XXV. Ovid had it wrong. The plight of the frightened maiden Gliding noiselessly into the woods, like a deer whose eyes Had been mesmerized by headlights on a cold November night, Was implausible without the contrivance of arrows: love’s dart Claimed Apollo while the dart of fear pierced Daphne’s heart, And so she ran, deeper and deeper into the woods, losing ground All the while to Apollo (for love moved faster than fear), Until the gods, granting her wish, turned the nymph Into a laurel, which Apollo hopelessly embraced. Poetic justice? Yes, except it didn’t happen that way. Their foot race ended In a forest clearing, where Daphne, exhausted but unashamed, Made Apollo watch her undress. He entered her At her request, as if his will were an extension of her own. The trees, inclining their branches, nodded in consent. Love won. XXVI. The boy, who was more eager than his father To live on a raft, sleep in the woods, and study the stars, Became his father, but not before he hid in a cave, slept in it Overnight, and was saved by a spider from sure destruction. The king’s soldiers, hot on his trail, saw the web stretch unbroken In the mouth of the cave, and assumed that no one was there. What is the correct interpretation of the spider’s web? To the soldiers it meant desolation; to the spider, conquest; To the grandfather telling the tale, providence. The boy Sees the dew cling to the web at dawn. The natural camouflage Of rabbits and snakes isn’t lost on him. He notices The triangle formed by three birds in the bare-branched sycamore. He can hear the hum of a bee admiring a tulip’s genitalia. And at night, he knows, all the colors are present in the white of the stars. XXVII. That was the year I first read H ö lderlin. The evening fell more slowly and the first day of spring Arrived more suddenly and stayed lovelier longer. Boys pursued muses and girls impersonated them. With the instinct of insects, He and She on the meadow Mate. What they dreamed stays real when they wake up In the evening of the first day of spring. Did they fall out of paradise or were they pushed? It’s unclear, but we next see them enter the gathering dusk, Hand in hand, and the camera pulls back and the voiceover says, “Good fortune is even harder to bear Than the bad fortune that came first. Remember this About the gods: their own immortality suffices them. The source of all rivers is a riddle even I cannot solve.” XXVIII. How little I have changed since then, or how much Of the change is in the eyes of the beholder Of a book I lived rather than wrote, whose author Seems like a stranger to me today. I remember, For example, wanting to write an apocalyptic parody Of Milton, in Milton’s high style, titled “Eden in Flames.” Adam and Eve celebrated their carnality, and when they woke, The branches of the fruit trees curved gracefully down And served them nectar. I couldn’t bring myself to describe Their banishment, and so the project failed. Yet what I heard When I slept sounded a lot like the chorus of joy In Beethoven’s Ninth, and what I saw when I woke up, If only for the length of a dream, was a deer, Eyes mesmerized by headlights, motionless in the middle of the road. XXIX. You could be the only passenger on the bus Who notices that the driver is blind. I, by contrast, Have eyes only for lovely you. Give me your hand. I will kiss it. You are cordially invited to my studio, Which resembles a psychiatrist’s office. Once there, I put on my glasses, Read passages out loud from Plato, Hobbes, Marx, and Freud, And ask you for your opinion of each. Together we analyze Solitude. There is a meeting of the minds, And sex follows. It’s the first day of spring and we want To walk along the river and roll on the grass and take off Our clothes while leaving the windows wide open. In fact, We can’t wait to get off this bus, which seems to be going Nowhere fast, as Spring puts her tongue in my ear And names the forbidden parts of her body. XXX. No one could say what the nightmare meant In the operating theater or the circus tent. And none of this will help us pay the rent: Many are called and sleep through the ringing, But we know it’s spring, though we’ve thrown our watches away. Our dreams, stretching across the chasm of day. Don’t deter us from waking, jumping into our clothes, Dancing down the avenue, and swinging through The revolving doors of the future, where we used to live, The day before yesterday, when we weren’t dying. —The question is whether the raven will return After his end-of-the-world adventures, after the storm When one by one the masks slip off, and the bride embraces The guilty son: true to the test, remembered and confessed.

I. Here is a place where declarations are made/where the heart takes precedence the gleam goes bland This is the heart part/intense improvisation on the I/THOU axis pity the poor actors (darlings)dust in their throats (choking) dialogue ancient (concentrated chatter dictated by clouds) click of whispers dammed up phrases     {mythologizing always) Moans move through their limbs like wind through Trees talking mad talk 'cross the illuminated Avenues of hard cities. II. Take the skin Take off the skin Remove the vital organs one by one especially the heart What is left The skeleton The skeleton is made of calcium magnesium, phosphorous et cetera: an amazing catalogue of chemicals You are holding in your arms an amazing catalogue of chemicals The elements clash tenderly Sparking compounds that move like eels Under touch. III. Dime falls, your voice rises (fevered) It's keen, the way the wind whips this Garbage up and around like a father Swinging his baby we are holding hands And yes, giggling no force can stop us now We are singing all the James Brown songs We know helpess off-key, but exhilarated Columbus Avenue breakdown: how the puddles In the sidewalks radiate splendor/glass Broken against high-rise buildings beckon We are hungry the shifting children salsa And you may be our feast, please linger You offer me your laughter I take the sweat from y our cheeks and hum. IV. Taste like tears—sea flaked and heated— Taste like try again and get nowhere, Maybe, this is the sonnet that mimes itself Sequences silent and perceptive The "might have saids" The stomach-eating rage The power of conversation is in its Possibilities of Interpretation (here's where the mime becomes important because the words sound so dumb) And here's where the anxiety dance gets choreographed. It goes like this: You turn clockwise. I turn Counter-Clockwise. We stop, stumble Resolve our steps. Begin again. V. You slipped into something dangerous after attending to your intimate conferences Thirsty friends forever requesting water Or is it blood they want?            Your blood. Somebody's screaming. Is it me? Here on the side street being a sideshow For passersby. You put on your silver armor. I have only my quaint devotion. It is not enough.            You say I can't eat your food, baby, but I sitll like your cooking. Did I trip?         Did you?    That Mingus record is still revolving. You smile serenely.             I can barely breathe. VI. If I could waste myself, I'd do it here In public. Curse your name till my tongue bled. The same tongue that searched out the darkest spot on your back and licked it like chocolate. Curse your name like you were some Broken god in need of further profaning. But I am no good at playing: victim. Sadness is so private. These tears on the Uptown Express. Take that tired song off the constant stereo. It keeps reminding me That what brought me to you was music. You said you never lied to me. Fucker. You take the exit sign home with you. But I won't become invisible.

I rise like a red balloon, untethered and vacant. The essence of my dolor has become rarefied, Holy; like a fragrance, bodiless, without referent. It is pale shadow on the sun, a wasp’s-wing, accidental Splash of poison on the white rose’s thorn— I twist it in my fingers and faint.Shall I tell you? There was one bad fairy at my birth, there came one curse, One blister, one drop of mercury in the moult of me And everything was ruined after. Still it is No good; the words drift from me like ashes. I am so old now, I have left half my life In caves hollowed out in rock by the seashore: I prayed in each one, and could not find my way back, Or lied when the pass-word was asked, or turned my back, Making gestures of despondency at the roiling surf. In a mirror I shot all my hateful selves, the yesterdays.

Some dictator or other had gone into exile, and now reports were coming about his regime, the usual crimes, torture, false imprisonment, cruelty and corruption, but then a detail: that the way his henchmen had disposed of enemies was by hammering nails into their skulls. Horror, then, what mind does after horror, after that first feeling that you’ll never catch your breath, mind imagines—how not be annihilated by it?—the preliminary tap, feels it in the tendons of the hand, feels the way you do with your nail when you’re fixing something, making something, shelves, a bed; the first light tap to set the slant, and then the slightly harder tap, to em-bed the tip a little more ... No, no more: this should be happening in myth, in stone, or paint, not in reality, not here; it should be an emblem of itself, not itself, something that would mean, not really have to happen, something to go out, expand in implication from that unmoved mass of matter in the breast; as in the image of an anguished face, in grief for us, not us as us, us as in a myth, a moral tale, a way to tell the truth that grief is limitless, a way to tell us we must always understand it’s we who do such things, we who set the slant, embed the tip, lift the sledge and drive the nail, drive the nail which is the axis upon which turns the brutal human world upon the world.

I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall Like a calendar in one color. I wear a torn place on my sleeve. It isn’t as simple as that. Between no place of mine and no place of yours You’d have thought I’d know the way by now Just from thinking it over. Oh I know I’ve no excuse to be stuck here turning Like a mirror on a string, Except it’s hardly credible how It all keeps changing. Loss has a wider choice of directions Than the other thing. As if I had a system I shuffle among the lies Turning them over, if only I could be sure what I’d lost. I uncover my footprints, I Poke them till the eyes open. They don’t recall what it looked like. When was I using it last? Was it like a ring or a light Or the autumn pond Which chokes and glitters but Grows colder? It could be all in the mind.  Anyway Nothing seems to bring it back to me. And I’ve been to see Your hands as trees borne away on a flood, The same film over and over, And an old one at that, shattering its account To the last of the digits, and nothing And the blank end. The lightning has shown me the scars of the future. I’ve had a long look at someone Alone like a key in a lock Without what it takes to turn. It isn’t as simple as that. Winter will think back to your lit harvest For which there is no help, and the seed Of eloquence will open its wings When you are gone. But at this moment When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye And my only Chance is bleeding from me, When my one chance is bleeding, For speaking either truth or comfort I have no more tongue than a wound.

phlegmatic on my bier no regrets — my body bears truth stem to stern beginning with the hips who am of common stock looking to the sea face ground — nothing now conjured from dust suffering — hung by the heels sought occasion as will was never conquered to see the host broken a swinging scythe — the dance this most pleasant to me so make moan of the old days say why should love live

1 The sky is alone tonight — the moon and stars seek some presence in the firm quiet, in the hard lack. A meteor falls in the empty dark. Someone is absent, the universe is bare listen, God, are you there? Sand silts the world — dockleaves in the yard, broken teeth eat sadness in the hayless barn. Silence knocks on men's doors and silence answers it — but music is heard in space. Lichen eats the stone, old arrogance eats peace: female salt eats being, angry rust eats blood. Beetle and seal are dead, poisoned children in lakes — but music is heard in space. Weak whistle-music moves beyond Orion's Belt, silk threads in a cave float in the dark. Some player in the solitude with a hopeful song but destruction still goes on. Lard made from whales, coats from the seals' fur — shaving brush from badger hair, burnt chicks are henfood. God's lovely creatures last though we eat them, trout and lamb — there's a use for the whistler's tune. I saw a nest ablaze, living wood sawdust. I saw a bird on fire fall soundless from the air. I saw the ancient ramparts downed and silence in the plover field. I saw the killer's belly feed. A tongue hangs on a tree, the magpies' might is right: a noise of glossy black and white. I heard their loud artillery. My ears are withered leaves from their cacophony, the discord shuts God's eyes. But a new musician plays and music's heard in space. 2 Listen, father, wait a while — stay alive with me until the universe's gown, once as fresh as cabbage-heart, is clean again. Do you remember mothers' milk like pigeons' milk that feeds the flock? It will pour again — wait on. I saw it last night in the northern sky whiter than any blood dripped from the moon's pap and every parched grave opened up and the dough of milk and earth made a bread forever fresh. Listen, father, listen close — though the sky's a tambourine danced on by an iron fool there's harmony beyond his noise. Take time and slow your pace — the dark drink waits for you and strange music out in space. Did you see them last night, night's-eyes brilliant bright in the black grass and dandelions en masse, guineas on velvet once on an old god's shoulders dead since the ancient magic passed? Remember the age of the seed, kingdom of creatures, power of air? (Man was not alone, man and his household.) Waterfall tumbling from eldertree, foam on pools like feather capes? Remember pollen from grasses' ears? Listen, father, cry no tear for evil seed, for history's débris, for the cold eternal stones, ruined towers, groves of graves. Listen: a bullfinch sings sweetly (musical anvil in forge) his harmony's all history. So, my father, wait a while. There's no music after dying, no inkling of a human sigh — just worlds falling into suns. Earth will be the brightest bride, star-necklets on her gown — tinwhistles cracking tunes, platform dances in each town. Easy, father, wait a while. But he did not wait. 3 One day when hope was ill I took dangerous medicine and hope died out and left me there, a naked surgeon, my patient dead. Like a hen at grips with death my bill dumb down a well, my plumage drowned in hate. I turned my back on Glendarock, walked for a drink to ease and to obliterate pain and fear and grief. Rats laughed from every hedge, bones embossed the road — in the wind a grey crow screeched. And then I saw the sign that led my heart to peace — barley like a green fire, sheets of barley in live waves quivering its thousand ears, swaying flames of green as quietly restless as a child asleep. I knew then no victory would go to iron axe or spear: our mother which art on earth conserve us safe and clean. Gale and 'quake knock flat all laws, all walls, all treasuries — bindweed chokes the telegraph. In spite of joy this peace waned and ice ran through every vein: all my pores were locked and my heart turned, a piglet on a spit, his blood steam, panting like a dog's tongue; the scythe taught the corn its dream. Caterpillars squashed on the roads, the swallow snapping back flies, frogspawn dead in pools dried up, the horsefly craving blood. Prick in a vice, a man screams. The scythe taught the poet his dream. Barley, cover me up, let me lie in your field. I ask of you a green death in the quiet milk of your stalks. Yes, the world will survive with neither you nor me alive. Damn you, death, I will not then experience the new gown of the universe — just lie manure on immaculate earth. 4 Once a perfect standing stone, fame engraved on my side, my statement unambiguous, I had nothing to hide. But the wind of curiosity blew with its what? and how? and why? and blunted the edge of my dignity. The cow of love rubbed its flank against my sides and frost burnt: the grain inside me shrank, I flaked on the grass bank. A flock of questions came seeking food and the mother in me said 'chook, chook' though I was dumb and mere rock. The anxiety mason chipped at me with his heavy hammer, carving his own design: his chisel gouged my grammar, engraved no notices of mine and every passing stray has read words not engendered in my head. And the lichen letters came twisting the bare word and their grey crust grew on me and concealed my shape. I lost all courage and desire, my voice was just a shard and all the silent world had ears. My body like a dead elm — dumb lightning upside-down — inquisitor's file eroding me, wedges wearing me out. Before me, in my mouth, restraints and oaths — but my poem stayed, I still stand. But where are they? The sky stands on my tip, stars flow through me, inside: I tame the sun and moon, harnessed to my pride. No friendships flourish in my shade, no herb of love, no mint of help, and I'm incapable of prayer. Now merely a lump of stone smashed in the field of scythes, a circle of calves around me staring with silly eyes . I lonesome like a hawtree while lichen hones me down and a lizard-brooch sleeps. 5 In Hammer Glen there's blood in milk and a goose complains on an empty hearth: a cat swells in the churn, dead and full. A flitch of bacon hangs itself from rafters: a tongs stands like a bull. My first trip to the house of thatch — home of the Slaughter Lad who condemned his own kind — a hammer-vision showed him how to escape the bird-lime. I was called, no scalpel packed. I threw a saddle on the dark and galloped to the threshold of his mind. Knots of briars slid from their nests, each poisoned eye a blackberry. I was pelted with a shower of fruit from a bare blackthorn tree. I heard the chick sing in the egg, and the straw in the mattress grew, the raspberry cried in the jam. But I came safe from these shades, out of the battle-noise gales, until I reached Slaughter Lad's and saw there under the moon's eye a hedgehog milking a jack snipe, a goat beating a drum in the sky — I had crossed over the borders of the live. I walked into his head — no knife, no healing herb — helix of a snail's shell, into a complex corridor. Prayers of hate, echoes of roars fell from the faceted walls — his father's face was carved on the floor. 'I hit him hit him hit him again — the goose drank the juice of this brain, I made a pig-trough from his skull and put his eyes under a hen. One did not hatch at all, the other shook and cracked. Out walked a chicken's claw. 'The claw still sticks in me — it tortures and exhausts: contrition runs from my nose, surgeon, give me peace.' I refused. And left the place. I threw away all style and craft, my heart was ash and chaff, my soul was a gravel bed — a naked surgeon, and my patient dead. 6 The one-eyed monk sits, half prays where millstones turn. His body comes to life, a need to travel grinds him up — a need for pools full of hope, a need for wells of honey and sweat, a need for hills where torches burn. He walks the white-flowered field looking for a ferny place clad in sparse purple light (a foxglove round a bee) to a mild meadow of sheep, to soft dark, root of history — peace to all who walk this way. But only silence from his bell, dead butterfly his manuscript — unfinished, unrevised — he is addicted to this trip, this drug called pilgrimage that kills all dignity and skill and still's his reason to exist. And when the monk grows weak, clumsy, worn, aged — no more desire to roam, wanting his bell and page. But he can no longer illuminate, has lost the power to pray, lost his interest in the everyday. This travel's an enormous act, a trip all have to take, and meadows and mountains lure all who want to escape with coaxing honey, coaxing kiss, 'Do not search for new things, do not search for new things'. I will drown all my books in that honeyed well and play like a foal in the brownest fern. I will swim in the pool of hope, I will walk till night in the bright fields. But in the splendid dark I'll hear wings of parchment shake and bells weep.

The god in me does not honor the god in you. The god in you murdered me once, and once was more than enough. So the god in me, adept at keeping my nature warm and inspired to love the benign, now prefers the chilly air of indifference, something picked up like a virus from the most vicious of mortals. The god in me regards the god in you as suspect, though sad to say, it wasn’t always so. There were the generous days in the beginning, when every word was made flesh. In the beginning the gods in us were content to let us go on behaving like perfect mortals, which is to say imperfectly, which is to say with our tenderness fully intact: the good kind that let us gladly undress our trepidations, and pleasure our solitude into a blissful oblivion; and the bad kind— invisible woundings no compliment or hot kiss, no confession of the amorous could soothe for long. And then, when the mortals we were had done enough to remind us that to be mortal is to be susceptible to the secret agenda, the cruel caprice, the soft but eviscerating voice— “at the mercy of a nuance”— the god in you decided it was time to act. A dark god, in need of a human sacrifice, smoothly turning your back on the earnest and their pathetic pleas. So the god in me, no stranger to the aberrant and the abhorrent, now has no choice but to respond in kind. A pity, really, since it has been the dream of so many gods to find themselves in some quiet room, the burden of power slipped off and scattered like clothes across the floor, the light of late afternoon a kind of benediction, and everywhere the gratitude for the privilege of feeling almost human.