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Earth’s Wrath at our assaults is slow to come But relentless when it does. It has to do With catastrophic change, and with the limit At which one order more of Magnitude Will bring us to a qualitative change And disasters drastically different From those we daily have to know about. As with the speed of light, where speed itself Becomes a limit and an absolute; As with the splitting of the atom And a little later of the nucleus; As with the millions rising into billions— The piker’s kind in terms of money, yes, But a million 2 in terms of time and space As the universe grew vast while the earth Our habitat diminished to the size Of a billiard ball, both relative To the cosmos and to the numbers of ourselves, The doubling numbers, the earth could accommodate. We stand now in the place and limit of time Where hardest knowledge is turning into dream, And nightmares still contained in sleeping dark Seem on the point of bringing into day The sweating panic that starts the sleeper up. One or another nightmare may come true, And what to do then? What in the world to do?

The pearls, mere reminders. The ocean’s rapid recoil, a signal. The gulls appeared enormous in that way only things from above can— such is presentation of the sudden. If only this were worthy of a frame, the wooden gesture announcing a moment past were cherished. But it was too late for that, too late to answer the surf’s anxious Why? too late to decline the continuous life he had resigned himself, turning away from the grave, that plot being too familiar to so many. Of course immortality had its price: first his staff he had taped back together, then the sleeves of his robe he had reclaimed from the depths, then the magic leached nightly from his fingertips so that now his incantation for a storm brought only a slight breeze, a quick sun shower that frightened only the flowers struggling in the salt air. Now, showing his centuries, he insists: This is the wind out of which I bring clouds. These are my hands that gnarled though they be when lifted to the sky bring rain

My objectives this morning were vague. As always I'd hike these hills— a way to keep going against the odds age deals, a way to keep body and soul together, and not so much thinking as letting things steal into mind— but I started counting from the very first step I took. I wore rank old boots, ill-laced, and patchwork pants. Around my neck hung the frayed lanyard of a whistle I use to summon our trio of dogs, who capered and yelped their pleasure at one of our walks, and more miraculous still, at having me for a master. It's true in a sense that I always count as I wander, though it's usually the beats of a tune (Thelonious's "Blue Monk" a favorite) that mark my time. These counts felt odder, better. We scattered a brood of grouse at step 91. The deerflies strafed us. At 500 a late trillium glowed by a ledge like a lotus. Right along the rain kept pounding. I was mindful of all these things but I never stopped counting. Life was good, and more. It was worthy of better response. At 1000 I thought, Enough—and counted on. Nothing was coming to mind. Nothing is coming again from my hike half the day ago with three dogs through rain but a mystic sense of well-being in quietly chanted numbers. Whatever this trance, I treasured it as a wonder not to be wrenched into meaning, as in Every second counts, as in You should count your blessings, though of those there seems no doubt.

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone, I feel I am alone. I check’d him while he spoke; yet, could he speak, Alas! I would not check. For reasons not to love him once I sought, And wearied all my thought To vex myself and him: I now would give My love could he but live Who lately lived for me, and, when he found ’Twas vain, in holy ground He hid his face amid the shades of death. I waste for him my breath Who wasted his for me! but mine returns, And this lorn bosom burns With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep, And waking me to weep Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years Wept he as bitter tears. Merciful God! such was his latest prayer, These may she never share. Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold, Than daisies in the mould, Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate, His name and life’s brief date. Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe’er you be, And oh! pray too for me!

When I found your face on a pillow of leaves you had already erased it. A nest so heavy can stay in the heavens only by reversal. By this law the knees are laced with abandon. I said to the young man. If watching is the manufacturer, and I lose you what angel takes the place of a dowry or distance in this leaf action? Subject to like passions as we are my soul herself, myself a possession I could not mistake for the man (his language and Latin) yet we are “taken to” a love passage I had hardly noticed in the late talk of money The work of love and the work of art has no sleeping part Is a drop of light in a small silver socket, a rosy dime in a daylight tryst Is a keeper and no spender As seeing who is invisible: a kind of flaxen thing caught in stone I obeyed and read further “I am hemmed” Though my heart were a pear tree threaded with fire Lion you leapt through me like fineness in the boundary gene Conductor you knit me as isthmus     Can I touch it Night is going 200 miles an hr as usual     In this way we find we are suddenly altered If I were a day would you like me better     Where were you you who in a bath changed me How to be walking is a glorious porthole Must I insist on an absence more foolish and secret When your timber’s a forest I can’t see for the tree in my bed Gentle captive, it is a larger than murder we tender     Fond and afire my style and my anchor Master there’s a boat for no lesser completion than beauty’s sweetest dress when you look on me kind Who am I to stop this flowing Least of all that home mile Sinking in the real I dreamed there was a further island Perhaps (how I thought you) to salt that harness with pleasure Lovely hero where the lovely hero bounds an acre hidden between eros and its errors Finding a dozen darts beneath the skin of Watching the wire of a skinny flame No other lovely hero found the back behind her secret form of symmetry Her gleaming difference Her schoolish way in pretty understandings Said   Not done   Not said   Undone Wealthy sadness has a way of winning everyone This is the end of my body as you know it its superfluous penchant for love its poorer costume, its shiny disaster What is a maiden, boatswain, but a fiery lair and a teary citadel By the smallest shipwreck a daughter is laughter Yet equaled as in a fable this Gibraltar goes headlong in a just king’s love See how his hands are her mercy and measure her number and rescue O Perseus Pythagoras Pierre my Pierre What rules a body’s buried factions when laundered by morning When called by our names although we are invisible Sleeping I forget my animal When the animal comes I’m forgotten because of it How was it called in its own country crossing a street in order to come inside

It’s a motley lot. A few still stand at attention like sentries at the ends of their driveways, but more lean askance as if they’d just received a blow to the head, and in fact they’ve received many, all winter, from jets of wet snow shooting off the curved, tapered blade of the plow. Some look wobbly, cocked at oddball angles or slumping forlornly on precariously listing posts. One box bows steeply forward, as if in disgrace, its door lolling sideways, unhinged. Others are dented, battered, streaked with rust, bandaged in duct tape, crisscrossed with clothesline or bungee cords. A few lie abashed in remnants of the very snow that knocked them from their perches. Another is wedged in the crook of a tree like a birdhouse, its post shattered nearby. I almost feel sorry for them, worn out by the long winter, off-kilter, not knowing what hit them, trying to hold themselves together, as they wait for news from spring.

From the third floor window you watch the mailman’s slow progress through the blowing snow. As he goes from door to door he might be searching for a room to rent, unsure of the address, which he keeps stopping to check in the outdated and now obliterated clipping he holds, between thickly gloved fingers, close to his eyes in a hunched and abruptly simian posture that makes you turn away, quickly switching off the lamp.

for Dylan I watch the ocean square into a turning Burn. Burning, my holes glass over. Lightning Hits the beach, melts me shut. I’ve drowned Before, in the bye along a row of shored Rocks. From the barrel chest butcher I buy Tight roasts. This year’s man, his clownish dog walks me In the park until I die on his leash and domestic Night’s sticky seizures. I thumb and ♥ it Like liking a million times. The rich own long Lighthouses to show us how away from them We are. Past waiting for the press of his chest To my back, I hobby along to the next hem’s Promise. Again I straddle the blade thinking This is the time it will fill the gash.

Among other economies, I’m of two minds, one possessed, the other a deep peace. Violent trembling seizes me, launched in the interval. Enemy of children, of quaint little things, of jokes and pictures. Enemy of comic papers and caricatures, of water-drinking. Too short for tragedy. Rarely has a large or distant expedition ever succeeded in its object, as may be seen in the failure of foreign missions, of human development, the immediate phenomena. Sympathy for the victors, who gallantly perish. Collateral catastrophes, as if they had a will. The more distinctive visual images sail too long, relinquish, burst. The “inner voice” is playing a game. Eagerness and obstinacy. A mysterious invisible placed in the mouth. We know too well how terrible it is to contend against personality. The whole idyll vanishes. Southward along a coastline, down among cities. Across the gulf to the promontory. Probably astonished. Not without mistrust. You are now my prisoner. Physically I am myself. Cultivated living, good manners, rich food and drink, order and elegance in my house. Erect military bearing.

The farmer in the dell The farmer in the dell Ox chip gastrology The farmer in the dell The farmer takes a wife The farmer takes a wife Pupa reconnaissance The farmer takes a wife The wife takes a child The wife takes a child Sweetbread electrolyte The wife takes a child The child takes a nurse The child takes a nurse Cheese futz habitual The child takes a nurse The nurse takes a cow The nurse takes a cow Flatworm collateral The nurse takes a cow