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Look at me now, I stand before you, a man whom life has made a gullible skeptic. Life so obvious and strange, so full of marvels and dross even in our sleep we create monuments even in our grave What more can we ask than to never know what to expect Each day has a different emissary Yesterday she was sharp-eyed

You bring a stalk of bamboo to the flu room. Hot pink Buddha offers some bullet-like pills from his plastic fingers. Oh high above the pecan tree, my dead grandfather walks Basil and Maestro, our two standard poodles. One’s beard is oily from the wheel of brie he’s stolen from the kitchen counter. The world works. Even from here. I can hear the buzz of machines, the clicks of pens, the secretary’s repressed anger (bites the inside of her cheek), the weird light of computer screens. The world works wonders: the cashier at Kmart rings up another self-tanning lotion. She rings up August, the ocean, a string bikini on younger flesh. Nude on bronze. Saltwater fish. The sand is piled high. It makes a wave over the pecan tree. Soon a tsunami will wash away the house, nursery. Nothing left but a palm frond, white long bone. Goodbye dog, tree, grandfather with your elk-tipped cane. The world works but not today. Not for me. Fever and the walls painted with sharks and starfish. There is so much aqua, histamine. Buddha, bring me another slice of pineapple.

Nothing worth noting except an Andromeda with quadrangular shoots— the boots of the people wet inside: they must swim to church thru the floods or be taxed—the blossoms from the bosoms of the leaves * Fog-thick morning— I see only where I now walk. I carry my clarity with me. * Hear where her snow-grave is the You ah you

for Mark Strand There are the few we hear of like Christ, who, with divine grace, made goodness look easy, had a following to draw near, gave up the right things and saw to it that sinners got listened to. Sharpening my failures, I remember the Jains, the gentle swoosh of their brooms on a dirt path trodden by children and goats, each thoughtful step taken in peril of an ant’s life or a fat grub hidden under a stick. In the car-wash, thinking of yogis under a tree plucking hair by hair the head of an initiate, I feel at least elsewhere those able for holiness— its signs and rigors—are at work. Ignominiously, I am here, brushes clamped, soap and water pulsing against my car. (A good sign too, those asylums for old and diseased animals.) My car is clean and no one has had to lift a finger. The dead bugs have been gushed away into a soup of grit and foam—the evidence not subterranean, not streaming along the asphalt in sunlight so dazzling I attend the birth-moment of the word Hosannah! I care about the bugs and not in this life will I do enough towards my own worth in the memory of them. I appreciate the Jains, their atonements for my neglect, though I understand it makes poor farmers of them, and good we all don’t aspire to such purity so there’s somebody heartless enough to plow the spuds. Early on in admiration, I put off knowledge, and so delayed reading about the Jains—not to lose solace. But in the County Library, turning a page, I meet them as the wealthiest moneylenders in Western India. Reading on, I’m encouraged—the list of virtues exceeds vices—just four of those: anger, pride, illusion and greed. The emphasis clearly on striving. I write them down in the corner of a map of Idaho: forbearance, indulgence, straightforwardness, purity, veracity, restraint, freedom from attachment to anything, poverty and chastity. Choosing, getting into the car to get to the supermarket, hearing over engine noise the bright agonies of birds, the radio news with the child nailed into a broom-closet for twenty-four hours by parents who in straightforwardness sacrificed forbearance, I feel a longing for religion, for doctrine swift as a broom to keep the path clear. Later, alone in the kitchen with the groceries, I read the list again. Overwhelmed by the loneliness of the saints, I take up my broom and begin where I stand, with linoleum.

It doesn’t bother me to have lint in the bottoms of pant pockets; it gives the hands something to do, especially since I no longer hold shovel, hod, or hammer in the daylight hours of labor and haven’t, in fact, done so in twenty-five years. A long time to be picking lint from pockets. Perhaps even long enough to have gathered sacks full of lint that could have been put to good use, maybe spun into yarn to knit a sweater for my wife’s Christmas present, or strong thread whirled and woven into a tweedy jacket. Imagine entering my classroom in a jacket made from lint. Who would believe it? Yet there are stranger things— the son of a bricklayer with hands so smooth they’re only fit for picking lint.

Shagged-gold, at rest the great haunches as if axled, fur sleeked like a butter rug. In the Serengeti sun, the male’s harem like a solar system, each lady kept exclusive, her seasonal heat for him alone, estrous belly pressed to the ground, then the male’s riding her musculature— throughout evolution the cat’s barbed penis nicking his breached mate as he dismounts. See the deliberate walk, cool as a criminal, the multi-jointed forepaws placed consciously even by the usurped king, his eye teeth blacked, his tail rotted off, tired wag of a bloody stump as he finally falls dying, the crucified face bedded in its wheel of hair, the tawny miscegenated eyes binocular in breadth. Shark in the long grasses. Shark in the long grass. Smell everywhere, the gazelle with its small-headed splendor gracing the plains is ambushed, devoured, its horned bone rack souvenired, the murderer’s ripping muzzle crimsoned. In the despot’s sons’ palace of pure gold the three in the iron cage lazing like statues. When the American unlocks the hinged door our shackled hearts contract. Unhooded and naked we are pushed into their presence, and for a shining moment the animals study us, these fabulous aliens. Here in a desert captivity snatched from the baobab’s sour fruit, their swagged bellies shifted, broken, and resignedly the ancient drive rose up only in one— its head wreathed beyond sorrow as it slouched out of the habitual darkness, the permanent rictus of its terrible mouth pain-struck. The thing came toward me with its ruined light, and I saw affliction in it. Dream of mastery. Dream of being wholly consumed, freed. I am the lion and the lion is me. Then the American pulls us out.

Since kindergarten my son's class has practiced for when a lion enters the building. They have a safe wall they crouch against. A closet some of the children fit into. The lion roams wild in the hall. Races up the stairs. When the lion is at the door they are taught to think of emptiness. Darkness. A real lion not some yellow-furred animal.

Content that now the bleeding bone be swept Out of her reach, she lay upon her side. In a blonde void sunk deep, she slept, she slept Bland as a child, slept, breathing like a bride. Color of noons that shimmer as they sing Above the dunes, her sandy flanks heaved slow. Between her paws curled inward, billowing Waves of desert silence seemed to flow. The crowd was gone, the bars were gone, the cage Thinned into air, the sawdust and the fleas Winnowed by sleep to nothing. After food, Absence possessed her: bliss keener than rage, If slumber’s prisoner at a bound could seize This ghostly freedom, lapping it like blood.

Lions don’t need your help. In the Serengeti, For instance, one thousand like the very rich Hold sway over more than Connecticut. The mane Of the lion, like the hooked jaw of the male salmon, Acts as a shield for defense and is the gift Of sexual selection. His eyes are fathomless amber. The lion is the most social of the big cats. Pride members are affectionate among themselves. They rub cheeks when they meet. They rest And hunt together. And cubs suckle indiscriminately. But strangers or members of a neighboring pride are not Usually accepted. If a pride male meets a strange female He may greet her in a friendly fashion And even mate with her But the pride females will drive her off. Male lions, usually depicted as indolent freeloaders Who let the lionesses do all the hunting, are not mere Parasites. They maintain the integrity of the territory. Lions eat communally but completely lack table manners. Indeed, lions give the impression that their evolution Toward a social existence is incomplete—that cooperation In achieving a task does not yet include The equal division of the spoils. More bad news: lions are not good parents. But prowess, that they have. Their courage comes From being built, like an automobile, For power. A visible lion is usually a safe lion, But one should never feel safe Because almost always there is something one can’t see. Given protection and power A lion does not need to be clever. Now, lions are not the most likable kind of animal Unless you are a certain type of person, That is, not necessarily leonine in the sense of manly Or ferocious, but one who wouldn’t mind resting twenty Of twenty-four hours a day and who is not beyond Stealing someone else’s kill About half the time. Lions are not my favorite kind of animal, Gazelles seem nicer, A zebra has his own sort of appealing pathos, Especially when he is sure prey for the lion. Lions have little to offer the spirit. If we made of ourselves parks and placed the lion In the constituent he most resembled He would be in our blood.

Each morning in the little white cabin by the river they woke to a raccoon clawing under the floorboards or banging in the wood stove. They did not discuss this. Instead they said it was a perfect day to pick blueberries on the hill, or that a hike to the old glassworks sounded good. They were beginning to speak not in meat but in the brown paper the butcher wraps around it. Brown paper around dirty magazines. Like dirty magazines, they only traced the contour of substance: silk over skin, skin over muscle, muscle over bone. What's under bone? Marrow? Their forks so small and dull. As if for dolls. You can tell dolls from animals because the latter are made of meat. Many eat it, also. Lions are interesting. Lions don't eat the flesh of their kills right away, but first lap up the blood, until the meat is blanched nearly white. White as the little cabin by the river they stayed in that summer. White as the raccoon covered in ashes, his black eyes bottomless and bright with hate.