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Mugoo was a sweeper boy and the cleanest of the sweeper caste. He would leap at the blush of dawn to clean the paths and the steps spotless. Gugoo was a bootmaker girl who made boots. Gugoo was higher caste than Mugoo. By rights he was the floor and she was the foot that trod. Yet after work, while the boys and girls played at tug of war, wrestling, or archery, shy boy Mugoo and shy girl Gugoo would draw the boys and girls. The children smiling at the shining visions would hug Mugoo and Gugoo. Then that couple would bury the drawings for fear their elders feel scandalized. In manhood for Mugoo and womanhood for Gugoo, how hard that Gugoo thread boots for her father when she had no golden stitch for the gaping hole in her soul. How hard that Mugoo scrub the lanes! Who dare be swept away from the law of caste by the foul stamp and passport of besotted love? Yet the hairs at their ears, their nipples, bomped by a mere sultana breeze. Then the swirling night when they’d escape for Arabia than stay near-far    ... In Mugoo and Gugoo Love was a rabbit leaping on a radish when they became runaway lovers! Like hares under the sketched moon they bobbed in the grunch wind before the tossed river. Timorous Gugoo to timorous Mugoo, “Is it not said the pure of heart are able to turn water into solid crystal orbs?” “I have heard it Gugoo. Let us swim till the waters turn dot by dot into crystal orbs, slowly mounting up for us a solid path so we can bobble across.” That cub-like couple held on a first-ever daredevil cuddle. Then snuck a parched kiss! And fell into their dive across Punjab’s muggur of an ogre — the river Ravi! They were soon to learn the blunderous water was bigger than they; they were dabbing onwards on the spot; directionless comical pups; pawdawdling    ... Only Death was woken by their swallowed screams. At the sight of a cutesome pair brinked for his maw Death’s thin lips aah’d and coo’d. To tickle himself Death tipped a witching shriek in the eardrums of the ferryman, Charan, who was rank in a dream. Charan swore at Death, “What bastard panchod is unheroing my dream? I was the River God riding the turmeric sea when the fisher king’s red bill fished me up a buxom masala mermaid!” Death hushed Charan. Bundled him into the boat. Charan, still swearing, fished for a scream-trail, for bunny-like feet in the sudden dead-stop river    ... Next morning, by the prophecy of the snake-priest, the villagers arrived at the shame-faced riverbank. Charan, in his guzzy saffron turban, was blaring at the crowd about a passion crime. Huffing too had arrived the muscly cobbler and sweeper fathers. All heard Charan, “I am my own King of the Sticks! I row two weeks that way to the flowers of Kashmir the gold-haired men with their bloated bags of honey, and one week that way for the spices of Samarkand with the red-fingered sellers of kalonji, saffron, jeera. Today I catch by the feet a fresh parable of a kutcha- pucka business. I sing it for only one rupee each!” All looked down by Charan’s sandal’d feet. Dared to be rolled in the same shivering blanket (like a chapati rolled around saag paneer) yet fearing to be parted, yet tenuously panting were Mugoo and Gugoo! The frail couple like shy red squirrels, “O father, we love you. But. Most we are    ... loving this: this that is my soul’s mirror. Mugoo is my Gugoo: Gugoo is my Mugoo.” The bony youths clung sauced together. Stiffed for the glooping apart. The bootmaker father been crunching his own fists, the sweeper father been hurling daggers from his eyes, as the crowd fell silent, the fathers spoke as one, “What draws them out of caste, their underhand idle drawings. Such fancy is inking good for nothing.” Gugoo and Mugoo raised their necks, “If all hearts were good for nothing, could love from each for each blow as one?” The apricot breeze blew a soft cadence but could it push the dominion of the communal mind past its bound and daily utility? Could sweet nothings clear the world free of blood fear? Of sweet-faced Mugoo and Gugoo in a threadbare pleading, “Do not part us.” From their mild rhetoric and politic of Love the hills and valleys had swooned into blossoms of heaven, and had set the scene with gaudiest cheeks. So who dare part them? O Love, be roused, take arms and wound for the cause of love! Or at least shackle the shadows that deepened into that tinsy couple.

The kitchen door opens onto dirt and the second half of the country all the way to the Pacific. Rusted prairie trains out of the tall weeds elbow the last century aside, rumble from every direction towards Chicago. My great-grandfather, who would be 150 years old today, put on his one tall hat and took the big trip to Omaha for my great-grandma with the family ring on his vest and winter wheat lying wait in seed. He gave her all the miles he had and she gave him the future I walk around in every day. The mountains were too far west to count so they doubled back over the land and century and the real weather kept coming from them.

For D’Andra My bowl brimming with pretzels, the snack you wanted least, I slid open the door of our sleeping car where we had been enjoying the country rushing by, as if   we were the first two people to look down into the valleys and see bright necks of pines stretch across farms and streams to the groves they once cradled. You had asked for Earl Grey cookies sandwiched around buttercream or marshmallows made of chocolate, but all the tea bags had been dunked and the chocolate melted over biscotti. When I came bearing the salted and twisted news, the room was empty but for a heel. It was black as a bunting, and wound with zippers, and every time the car rocked it looked ready to fly and escape into the cold, tangled air of   travel that always feels heavy with joy and desire, and a little sadness, always a little sadness, because of the leaving, which is what I do when I realize I’m in the wrong room and that numbers have betrayed me again while I was hunting and gathering, foraging like Homo habilis who probably never lost his cave. Out of patience, I opened every door marked with threes and eights, those conjoined twins disastrously separated at birth, and roused the scabbed eyes of sleepers like a beggar, no, an angel, a begging angel who has written on his heart will work for love . Having not found our room, not heard the sharp swing of   your voice, I descended upon the passenger cars and row upon row of couples asleep or staring out the windows like zombies trying to remember what happens next once the newspaper is well-thumbed, the tea has gone cold, and the conversation is dead. I called for you, in vain, even using your secret names, the ones only the night knows: wind-kiss, brilliant-fruit, dervish-moon    . . . Over and over, I said your names, over and over until they filled the wounded air of  the car and when there was no more room for another sound, they caught and hooked the ring of   the brakes hugging the rails. Just when I thought I wouldn’t find you, you were there, the train was pulling away, and I was watching you slowly eat a dish of whipped cream and bananas — the house special — in a cafe in a city we didn’t know. When you finished, we started walking down a road that bent like a smile, a shy smile, like the one the Japanese cat wore on your purse. The road, we were told, would take us to the end of   the line where all lovers in search of   joy packed on bullet trains — they’re the fastest on two continents — arrive every hour.

At length, by so much importunity press'd, Take, C——, at once, the inside of my breast; This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame, Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame: I am not as cold as a virgin in lead, Nor is Sunday's sermon so strong in my head: I know but too well how time flies along, That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young. But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy Long years of repentance for moments of joy, Oh! was there a man (but where shall I find Good sense and good nature so equally join'd?) Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine; Not meanly would boast, nor would lewdly design; Not over severe, yet not stupidly vain, For I would have the power, tho' not give the pain. No pedant, yet learned; no rake-helly gay, Or laughing, because he has nothing to say; To all my whole sex obliging and free, Yet never be fond of any but me; In public preserve the decorum that's just, And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust; Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow, But not fulsomely pert, nor yet foppishly low. But when the long hours of public are past, And we meet with champagne and a chicken at last, May ev'ry fond pleasure that moment endear; Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear! Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd, He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud. Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live, And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive. And that my delight may be solidly fix'd, Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix'd; In whose tender bosom my soul may confide, Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide. From such a dear lover as here I describe, No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe; But till this astonishing creature I know, As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so. I never will share with the wanton coquette, Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit. The toasters and songsters may try all their art, But never shall enter the pass of my heart. I loath the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise: Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies: And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told, We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold.

If yet I have not all thy love, Dear, I shall never have it all; I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move, Nor can intreat one other tear to fall; And all my treasure, which should purchase thee— Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters—I have spent. Yet no more can be due to me, Than at the bargain made was meant; If then thy gift of love were partial, That some to me, some should to others fall, Dear, I shall never have thee all. Or if then thou gavest me all, All was but all, which thou hadst then; But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall New love created be, by other men, Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears, In sighs, in oaths, and letters, outbid me, This new love may beget new fears, For this love was not vow'd by thee. And yet it was, thy gift being general; The ground, thy heart, is mine; whatever shall Grow there, dear, I should have it all. Yet I would not have all yet, He that hath all can have no more; And since my love doth every day admit New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store; Thou canst not every day give me thy heart, If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it; Love's riddles are, that though thy heart depart, It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it; But we will have a way more liberal, Than changing hearts, to join them; so we shall Be one, and one another's all.

arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair, The pink paint on the innocence of fear; Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. Cutting with knives served by their softest care, Served by their love, so barbarously fair. Whose mothers taught: You’d better not be cruel! You had better not throw stones upon the wrens! Herein they kiss and coddle and assault Anew and dearly in the innocence With which they baffle nature. Who are full, Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit, Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise. To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill. To be a random hitching-post or plush. To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem. Their guild is giving money to the poor. The worthy poor. The very very worthy And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy? perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim Nor—passionate. In truth, what they could wish Is—something less than derelict or dull. Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze! God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold! The noxious needy ones whose battle’s bald Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down. But it’s all so bad! and entirely too much for them. The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans, Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains, The old smoke,heavy diapers, and, they’re told, Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs. The soil that looks the soil of centuries. And for that matter the general oldness. Old Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old. Not homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe. Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic, There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no Unkillable infirmity of such A tasteful turn as lately they have left, Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars Must presently restore them. When they’re done With dullards and distortions of this fistic Patience of the poor and put-upon. They’ve never seen such a make-do-ness as Newspaper rugs before! In this, this “flat,” Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered. . . .) Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon. Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look, In horror, behind a substantial citizeness Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart. Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door. All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft- Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt. Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost. But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . . They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra, Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks, Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin “hangings,” Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend, When suitable, the nice Art Institute; Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind. Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers So old old, what shall flatter the desolate? Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames And, again, the porridges of the underslung And children children children. Heavens! That Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League agree it will be better To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies, To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring Bells elsetime, better presently to cater To no more Possibilities, to get Away. Perhaps the money can be posted. Perhaps they two may choose another Slum! Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!— Where loathe-love likelier may be invested. Keeping their scented bodies in the center Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall, They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall, Are off at what they manage of a canter, And, resuming all the clues of what they were, Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.

I was always afraid of the next card the psychic would turn over for us— Forgive me for not knowing how we were every card in the deck.

Magdalen’s Epistle Of Love’s discrete occasions, we observe sufficient catalogue, a likely-sounding lexicon pronounced so as to implicate a wealth of difference, where reclines instead a common element, itself quite like those elements partaken at the table served by Jesus on the night he was betrayed—like those in that the bread was breakable, the wine was red and wet, and met the tongue with bright, intoxicating sweetness, quite like ... wine. None of what I write arrives to compromise that sacrament, the mystery of spirit graved in what is commonplace and plain— the broken, brittle crust, the cup. Quite otherwise, I choose instead to bear again the news that each, each was still itself, substantial in the simplest sense. By now, you will have learned of Magdalen, a name recalled for having won a touch of favor from the one we call the son of man, and what you’ve heard is true enough. I met him first as, mute, he scribbled in the dust to shame some village hypocrites toward leaving me unbloodied, if ill-disposed to taking up again a prior circumstance. I met him in the house of one who was a Pharisee and not prepared to suffer quietly my handling of the master’s feet. Much later, in the garden when, having died and risen, he spoke as to a maid and asked me why I wept. When, at any meeting with the Christ, was I not weeping? For what? I only speculate —brief inability to speak, a weak and giddy troubling near the throat, a wash of gratitude. And early on, I think, some slight abiding sense of shame, a sop I have inferred more recently to do without. Lush poverty! I think that this is what I’m called to say, this mild exhortation that one should still abide all love’s embarrassments, and so resist the new temptation—dangerous, inexpedient mask—of shame. And, well, perhaps one other thing: I have received some little bit about the glib divisions which so lately have occurred to you as right, as necessary, fit That the body is something less than honorable, say, in its ... appetites? That the spirit is something pure, and—if all goes well— potentially unencumbered by the body’s bawdy tastes. This disposition, then, has led to a banal and pious lack of charity, and, worse, has led more than a few to attempt some soul-preserving severance—harsh mortifications, manglings, all manner of ritual excision lately undertaken to prevent the body’s claim upon the heart, or mind, or (blasphemy!)spirit— whatever name you fix upon the supposéd bodiless. I fear that you presume—dissecting the person unto something less complex. I think that you forget you are not Greek. I think that you forget the very issue which induced the Christ to take on flesh. All loves are bodily, require that the lips part, and press their trace of secrecy upon the one beloved—the one, or many, endless array whose aspects turn to face the one who calls, the one whose choice it was one day to lift my own bruised body from the dust, where, it seems to me, I must have met my death, thereafter, this subsequent life and late disinclination toward simple reductions in the name of Jesus, whose image I work daily to retain. I have kissed his feet. I have looked long into the trouble of his face, and met, in that intersection, the sacred place—where body and spirit both abide, both yield, in mutual obsession. Yes, if you’ll recall your Hebrew word. just long enough to glimpse in its dense figure power to produce you’ll see as well the damage Greek has wrought upon your tongue, stolen from your sense of what is holy, wholly good, fully animal— the body which he now prepares.

Someone will push the house over one day, Some spacedozer give it a shove, But the cobbles we laid down here in the yard, These are a labour of love. All winter we set these cobbles in place, Or was it the summer as well? Sorting through lumpy bluestone pitchers For ones that looked suitable. The old house decayed – along with us – Will a strange new resident Admire the patio made in joy Wondering what we meant? Things fall apart, the poet wrote, Certainties crumble and move But the cobbles oddly plotted together, These are our labour of love.

I could make a wardrobe with tufts of wool caught on thistle and bracken. Lost—the scraps I might have woven whole cloth. Come watch, the man says, shearing sheep with the precision of long practice, fleece, removed all of a piece, rolled in a neat bundle. I’ve been so clumsy with people who’ve loved me. Straddling a ewe, the man props its head on his foot, leans down with clippers, each pass across the coat a caress. His dogs, lying nearby, tremble at every move—as I do, loving the hands that have learned to gentle the life beneath them.