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“If God is Art, then what do we make of Jasper Johns?” One never knows what sort of question a patient will pose, or how exactly one should answer. Outside the window, snow on snow began to answer the ground below with nothing more than foolish questions. We were no different. I asked again: “Professor, have we eased the pain?” Eventually, he’d answer me with: “Tell me, young man, whom do you love?” “E," I’d say, “None of the Above," and laugh for lack of something more to add. For days he had played that game, and day after day I avoided your name by instinct. I never told him how we often wear each other’s clothes— we aren’t what many presuppose. Call it an act of omission, my love. Tonight, while walking to the car, I said your name to the evening star, clearly pronouncing the syllables to see your name dissipate in the air, evaporate. Only the night air carries your words up to the dead (the ancients wrote): I watched them rise, become remote.

night and open as a child never feared an inch of her face it was a stance and succulence even in sleep had the graves a nightingale asked so far

“I am like thee, O, Night, dark and naked; I walk on the flaming path which is above my day-dreams, and whenever my foot touches earth a giant oak tree comes forth.” “Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thou still lookest backward to see how large a foot-print thou leavest on the sand.” “I am like thee, O, Night, silent and deep; and in the heart of my loneliness lies a Goddess in child-bed; and in him who is being born Heaven touches Hell.” “Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thou shudderest yet before pain, and the song of the abyss terrifies thee.” “I am like thee, O, Night, wild and terrible; for my ears are crowded with cries of conquered nations and sighs for forgotten lands.” “Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thou still takest thy little-self for a comrade, and with thy monster-self thou canst not be friend.” “I am like thee, O, Night, cruel and awful; for my bosom is lit by burning ships at sea, and my lips are wet with blood of slain warriors.” “Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman; for the desire for a sister-spirit is yet upon thee, and thou has not become alone unto thyself.” “I am like thee, O, Night, joyous and glad; for he who dwells in my shadow is now drunk with virgin wine, and she who follows me is sinning mirthfully.” “Nay, thou art not like me, O, Madman, for thy soul is wrapped in the veil of seven folds and thou holdest not thy heart in thine hand.” “I am like thee, O, Night, patient and passionate; for in my breast a thousand dead lovers are buried in shrouds of withered kisses.” “Yea, Madman, art thou like me?  Art thou like me?  And canst thou ride the tempest as a steed, and grasp the lightning as a sword?” “Like thee, O, Night, like thee, mighty and high, and my throne is built upon heaps of fallen Gods; and before me too pass the days to kiss the hem of my garment but never to gaze at my face.” “Art thou like me, child of my darkest heart?  And dost thou think my untamed thoughts and speak my vast language?” “Yea, we are twin brothers, O, Night; for thou revealest space and I reveal my soul.”

turns out there are no dead bodies after all unless you put them there

Unmet at Euston in a dream Of London under Turner’s steam Misting the iron gantries, I Found myself running away From Scotland into the golden city. I ran down Gray’s Inn Road and ran Till I was under a black bridge. This was me at nineteen Late at night arriving between The buildings of the City of London. And the I (O I have fallen down) Fell in my dream beside the Bank Of England’s wall to be, me With my money belt of Northern ice. I found Eliot and he said yes And sprang into a Holmes cab. Boswell passed me in the fog Going to visit Whistler who Was with John Donne who had just seen Paul Potts shouting on Soho Green. Midnight. I hear the moon Light chiming on St Paul’s. The City is empty. Night Watchmen are drinking their tea, The Fire had burnt out. The Plague’s pits had closed And gone into literature. Between the big buildings I sat like a flea crouched In the stopped works of a watch.

Down here, no light but what we carry with us. Everywhere we point our hands we scrawl color: bulging eyes, spines, teeth or clinging tentacles. At negative buoyancy, when heavy hands seem to grasp & pull us down, we let them, we don’t inflate our vests, but let the scrubbed cheeks of rocks slide past in amniotic calm. At sixty feet we douse our lights, cemented by the weight of the dark, of water, the grip of the sea’s absolute silence.  Our groping hands brush the open mouths of anemones, which shower us in particles of phosphor radiant as halos.  As in meditation, or in deepest prayer, there is no knowing what we will see.

Plankton rise toward the full moon spread thin on Wakaya’s surface. Manta rays’ great curls of jaw scoop backward somersaults of ocean in through painted caves of their mouths, out through sliced gills. Red sea fans pulse. The leopard shark lounges on a smooth ramp of sand, skin jeweled with small hangers-on. Pyramid fish point the way to the surface. Ninety feet down, blue ribbon eels cough, their mouths neon cautions. Ghost pipefish curl in the divemaster’s palm. Soft corals unfurl rainbow polyps, thousands of mouths held open to night. Currents’ communion—giant clams slam shut wavy jaws, send shivers of water. Christmas tree worms snap back, flat spirals tight, living petroglyphs against the night.

Roadlight licks the night ahead, licks the white line on night’s new hide, licks the undulating blacktop flat, sticks its end- less forking tongue out onward, flicks itself at culvert, tree, passing truck, a sign insisting heartbeats equal conscious life (it may be) of someone’s (maybe my) forever unborn child. I let the knife of wind inside and sing A Whiter Shade of Pale, no earthly reason why, and think of what won’t be and who, and whether it be speed, wind, song, or my mind’s roar that drowns for once time’s slangy whine, here comes hope to climb clear of before; stillborn hope with desperate, Moro-reflex, undead grip climbs right back up my neck, raising each pointless, residual nape hair in ancestral salute to an absence, to the air that won’t question itself, won’t ever check the moral rearview. I accelerate gamely, wondering what makes me want to leave each person, place and thing I learn to love. What shoves me off again, racing insanely, as if to the place that will always save a place for me, a room that will contain the kind of people who’d embrace the things I’m still afraid I’m still afraid to face.

Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death I lay there dreaming and my magic head remembered and forgot. On first cry I remembered and forgot and did believe. I knew love and I knew evil: woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind, despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass, renewal of all waters and the time of the stars and the black snake with gold bones. Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding. Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth walked through the house, black in the morning dark. Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief, my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep. Voices of all black animals crying to drink, cries of all birth arise, simple as we, found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream, deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.

Blood-drop, lung of fire setting past the sea bell and wave; why am I separate from that giant burrowing into further life? The body breathes and rides a heavy-netted ocean swollen by the tide. Under the half-moon it’s the lighthouse light that turns the rest of me to early nightfall, headland, home. I send it back, a mirrored flickering across cold waters. We allow ourselves the crest that breaks above the surface then re-forms. We make it human and we call it love. This wintering is my own and not the world’s, although the world is wintering.