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The clouds had made a crimson crown Above the mountains high. The stormy sun was going down In a stormy sky. Why did you let your eyes so rest on me, And hold your breath between? In all the ages this can never be As if it had not been.

28 June 1914 Although an assassin has tried and failed to blow him to pieces earlier this morning, Archduke Ferdinand has let it be known he will very soon complete his journey as planned along the quay in Sarajevo. For a moment, however, he has paused to recover his composure at the window of a private room in the Town Hall, after finding the blood of his aide-de-camp spattered over the manuscript of the speech he was previously unable to complete. And indeed, the prospect of an Austrian brewery in the distance is reassuring, likewise the handsome bulk of the barracks filled with several thousand soldiers of the fatherland. This is how those who survive today will remember him: a man thinking his thoughts until his wife has finished her duties— the Countess Chotek, with her pinched yet puddingy features, to whom he will whisper shortly, ‘Sophie, live for our children’, although she will not hear. As for his own memories: the Head of the local Tourist Bureau has now arrived and taken it upon himself to suggest the Archduke might be happy to recall the fact that only last week he bagged his three thousandth stag. Was this, the Head dares to enquire, with the double-barrelled Mannlicher made for him especially— the same weapon he used to dispatch two thousand one hundred and fifty game birds in a single day, and sixty boars in a hunt led by the Kaiser? These are remarkable achievements the Head continues, on the same level as the improvement the Archduke has suggested in the hunting of hare, by which the beaters, forming themselves into a wedge-shape, squeeze those notoriously elusive creatures towards a particular spot where he can exceed the tally of every other gun. In the silence that follows it is not obvious whether the Archduke has heard the question. He has heard it. He is more interested, however, in what these questions bring to mind: an almost infinite number of woodcock, pigeon, quail, pheasant and partridge, wild boars bristling flank to flank, mallard and teal and geese dangling from the antlers of stags, layer and layer of rabbits and other creatures that are mere vermin— a haul that he predicts will increase once the business of today has been completed.

And what did the Armenians say? An Umayyad monk spins wheat and wool above us Time is a scarecrow • That’s what the Armenians said

This high up, the face eroding; the red cedar slopes over. An accident chooses a stranger. Each rain unplugs roots which thin out like a hand. Above the river, heat lightning flicks silently and the sound holds, coiled in air. Some nights you are here dangling a Valpolicella bottle, staring down at the flat water that slides by with its mouth full of starlight. It is always quiet when we finish the wine. While you were a living man how many pictures were done of you. Serious as an angel, lacing up your boots. Ice blows into my fields.

I never glimpse her but she goes Who had been basking in the sun, Her links of chain mail one by one Aglint with pewter, bronze and rose. I never see her lying coiled Atop the garden step, or under A dark leaf, unless I blunder And by some motion she is foiled. Too late I notice as she passes Zither of chromatic scale— I only ever see her tail Quicksilver into tall grasses. I know her only by her flowing, By her glamour disappearing Into shadow as I’m nearing— I only recognize her going.

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat Saying to me as we walked across the Yard Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said You are not wearing overcoat. He said, You should do as I say not do as I do. Just how American it was and how late Forties it was Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me In his New York apartment sitting on chair Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering. Look at this photograph said of his mother and father. Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out. Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture. Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said. Why don't you ask him? Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not. Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph. Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs. Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true. Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.

The slice I ate I want it back Those crumbs I swept up I’d like my share again I can still taste it like it was The memory by itself is delicious Each bite was a small miracle Both nourishing and sweet I wish I had saved just a little bit I know it wasn’t a literal cake It’s the thought that counts Like a gift that’s not store-bought Making it even more special Like a dream that makes you Want to go back to sleep You can’t have your cake And eat it too Momma said I was defiant and hardheaded And answered yes I can too The look she gave me said boy I hope you aren’t a fool all your life

Momus is the name men give your face, The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland, Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray Against horizons purple, silent. Yes, Momus, Men have flung your face in bronze To gaze in gargoyle downward on a street-whirl of folk. They were artists did this, shaped your sad mouth, Gave you a tall forehead slanted with calm, broad wisdom; All your lips to the corners and your cheeks to the high bones Thrown over and through with a smile that forever wishes and wishes, purple, silent, fled from all the iron things of life, evaded like a sought bandit, gone into dreams, by God. I wonder, Momus, Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere and look with deep laughter On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known, solemn repetitions of history. A droning monotone soft as sea laughter hovers from your kindliness of bronze, You give me the human ease of a mountain peak, purple, silent; Granite shoulders heaving above the earth curves, Careless eye-witness of the spawning tides of men and women Swarming always in a drift of millions to the dust of toil, the salt of tears, And blood drops of undiminishing war.

For Michael Williams Monaco was clean, with small clean streets. There was not much in the way of  a shore. There was hardly any place to go. One clipped, well-behaved London plane tree, not welcoming like most ordinary trees, was kept apart by a white spear-tipped fence, and had a somewhat diffident sense of  noblesse oblige. Through the cream silk brocade window treatments, you could see it; it did not contain birds, repelled the idea of  nests, its roots trained and snipped. At night, it was lit. Spritzed, its leaves shimmered like the sequins of a whore. In the palace hung a portrait of   Princess Grace’s family, an extravaganza of pastel sfumato by R.W. Cowan, blurring every uncertain, authentic thing. The air inside the cliffs thickened as in the closet of a grandmother. Perfumed Germans winced, smooching with strong lips on the embankment. When the man and woman arrived at the Hôtel de Paris, the staff assumed they  were married. The German  jet ski instructor was unsure and asked: “Are you brother and sister?” They paused, demurely, and smiled. The mystery of  their bond made it more intense. The man and the woman were in their late thirties or early forties; they were not young, nor were they old. The woman was French and wore a white linen shirt, starched and pressed. She made her money in the drug trade, but all the man knew was that she sold works of art: a Matisse here, a Picasso there — each transaction taking place in the Bahamas. She was what she said she was, but we are rarely what we say we are. The man, a poor American, meant to say no, but instead said yes. He was tall, athletic and effeminate with a mincing gate — as if  he were being chased by something no one could see. Dressed in cashmere and shantung, he wore needle-pointed shoes by Stubbs & Wootton. Broad-shouldered, practical, the Frenchwoman grimaced, was referred to as “handsome.” Ample were her gestures, ample her need to please; her tone, although not sexual, came close. Her preferences were dubious; maybe everyone’s are. Nevertheless, the couple exhibited variations the world never embraced, but presented as a couple the world embraced them promptly, for the world trusted what was coupled. He was he; she was she; both were naive, but naivety has a way of  hiding its intentions. Whatever their motives happened to be, it pleased them to make a myth for everyone to see. Promises were skirted at a little cafe — “What shall we name our children,mon petit chéri?” she asked. How controlled their wonder was. The couple was received for cakes and tea by the Baroness von Lindenhoffer. The Baroness was lesbian, but of this she never spoke, and so she believed herself a conundrum — for her, muteness banished the undoable. She often began her conversations by mentioning her brief marriage to a hairy Russian acrobat. Her makeup was heavy, clown-like, and over her large, ill-defined body, red polka dots sheeted her parts. Despite this, people mistook her for a man. On a chintz loveseat, each hip bookended by a pug, she sat and said: “You seem like a lovely couple!” She meant what she said but she didn’t say what she meant. Then there was talk of  places they had traveled and feelings of superiority at having seen what others had not: “Oh, you haven’t been there?” and “Oh, you must go!” Through the large picture window, beyond the Baroness’s head, piled high with hair dyed red, slowly processed gargantuan cruise ships like wedding cakes with glittering tiers of candles. She inserted another biscotti behind her lips which were the size of   luggage handles, winked and said: “Here in Monaco our favorite word is more!” Her eyes scanned the clutter of the Côte d’Azur: the sea published its gilded mirrors, the sun accelerated beauty and its loss, no children for miles and Brigitte Bardot, in St. Tropez, locked her house, cats licking her purple-veined ankles. The Baroness was thinking, pausing like an old steamer. Her mascara-clotted eyelids closed and for a moment, she erased what she could. With mounting unease, she realized she might be what was missing. The thought vanished. Should she warn the couple? Although not feminine, she was maternal. Then that thought passed. She shrugged and comforted herself. Difficult, celibate, implacable, a final time she assessed the couple of compromised want, aware that nothing blackens the heart like a mariage blanc, and stamped them —Mwah! Mwah!— with the imprimatur of  two kisses each. The relationship lasted three months. They had chosen wrongly, and plausibly they fell apart, like the couple in Godard’s Le Mépris. Had she wanted more than a cover? Had he covered more than he wanted? The heart, behind its casements, is faceted, pronged, coveted, intricate and known by few. He could not be kept. She withdrew her money. Reconciliation occurred after they ceased speaking. On their last night in Monaco, she turned to him and wondered if  her life had meant anything. He did not answer: he had developed a grace for offering himself  to those who found truth difficult. When they left the restaurant, she paid using a heavy, black American Express card. Each took a doggy bag and smelled of cooked meat. This alignment of opposite sexes had provided solace, and for a time, each had assumed a place, discerned a way to live. Indeed, they lived on, never to see each other again, both aware the one had harmed the other: whether intended or not, the act could not be undone. What they recalled, when they recalled, was often wrong, or was it that so much went wrong and that was why they kept recalling? At the mention of   Monaco, they recounted certain adornments — agapanthus purpling, old men playing boules, and blue yachts tilting on a malachite sea, or were they malachite yachts tilting on a blue sea? Wherever they went henceforth — the Hôtel du Cap, the Boboli Gardens, or even simple, small places in America — their minds would inexorably turn, and then return, to that interval in Monaco, where they saw the truth and the truth was . . . Monaco, Monaco — frivolous, ridiculous, miniscule principality. It was there they came to know how dangerous beauty could be, how one could disappear into it, and with that dark knowledge they traveled on. Each, in their separate lives, always mentioned Monaco with deference, out of shyness, yes, but also shame, and that need to abridge the past. Do you recognize them? They were not a couple, but they were a pair. Tonight the sea pushes against Monaco. Jewelry store owners don white gloves, lock their doors. The principality has long forgotten the pair. Baronesses, marchionesses, and princesses have had their portraits painted and affixed to walls. The narrow, dead-end streets embed themselves into the escarpments like bobby pins. The moon spreads her cape of   baubles across the sea with glamorous transience, enlarging behind the dollhouse casino, banks, hotels, feeling into the rooms, fingering the miniatures.

There was no room for us to have feelings. Under the Queen, we were foiled, our faces blanked of wonder. A pitiful ordeal, our cheap toil. We hated her for stealing. Our crooked backs ached; our knees bled from kneeling, the whole sum of our treasures given up to fund her. There was no room for us to have feelings, so we made our way quietly; we arranged our own dealings, checked what we clocked. Each swallowed their thunder and railed within. Nothing left out for stealing. But pound for pound, we grew skinny, weary, reeling from the new rules she devised. We had to watch and mind her. There was no room for us to have feelings. We were audited, then fined. We abided her schooling. Then, all music stopped. All solitude filled, we couldn't ponder our losses. We tried to forget how much she was stealing. Our patron saints left us; the stars took to jeering, leering at our lessened state. We hardened at our blunder. There was no room to have any feelings. What of us? Not a pittance. No worth there for stealing.