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Dream of Mom’s red parka gone— someone stole it right out of the closet of the burned-down house—what good could it do anybody else, broken zipper that always got caught, she’d jimmy it loose, just part of putting it on—and she was so tiny, the arms too short even for me, too-tiny gloves in the pockets, thumbs stubby, practically useless to anyone but her—they deserve it if they shove in a hand, find the tissue she used and then left there who knows which cold day, what she needed it for, or why.

9:13 p.m., Lucky Bock in hand, I inscribe: walked the lovely 33 blocks to school today, streets clear and thick melting snow all around. taught my 4 hours of poetry; the afternoon class was hard; kid named Schweikert kept on fucking up. took typed-up poems of yesterday to Platt and put up poster there of Anne and Reed’s reading Sat. ate nearly 2 peanutbutter sandwiches with raw carrots. typed. read kids’ poems. at 4 I started home, got a ride with Jim Bay. press release to daily paper. stopped in Baird’s for 2 beers, looked at paper. home, kissed Mara, Sierra. in the mail: Out There, from Chicago, and a letter stating the city of Grand Island had decided not to prosecute re my arrest Friday for intoxication. wonder why. Nick the landlord didn’t show (he was supposed to have us sign lease on the new duplex) (this place gonna be torn down). ate a very delicious supper, ham-and-cheese rarebit with cold broccoli and cold oregano’d tomato, cooked by Mara. paperwork, played a game of solitaire, harried by Sierra’s new red car. dropped over then to the Korner Bar, put up a poster under the phone sign, said hi to a few folks and got halloo’d by this guy I’d spoken to 2 months before, who’d said his high school son adored me, but it might be thought improper that I hang around, shoot pool in Korner Bar. a beefy mid-30’s man, he bought me a beer, apologized and told me of his luck: he’d won a thousand one-hundred eighty dollars today betting on one horse at Fonner Park. we talked of poetry, family, work — he mentioned Kilmer, Stevenson, Nash and others, quoted verbatim his own published poem on fire-fighting (he is the G.I. fire-chief). his boyhood favorites, whom he reads all of even now: Edgar Rice Burroughts and Jules Verne. his son, though epileptic, does the high jump at the high school; he was disturbed that it wasn’t the broad jump, in which he himself still holds a record, set in 1959. the taxes have jumped up like crazy on their nice spread just inside the city limits. I got up and slapped him on the back and left, stopping first to ask Clark, standing end of the bar, what he knew of me on Friday night at the Kyriss. I’d blanked out completely (woke up in jail, ate blue oatmeal). he said I’d just got drunk, he thought Rod had taken me home. he said, at one point, just waking up, I’d grabbed the edge of the table and tilted it till the glasses all came sliding down and almost off, then tilted it back till they slid back to where they were, and never spilled a drop. he said I’d bought some beers for him and Pat but before they could get to them drank them up myself. okay, Clark, you’re a good guy with your black curly hair and toothless grin, and your wild life. I was just wondering. check with Rod when have a chance. — and off, through mud and occasionally-lighted puddles, home, where Mara’s napping still and there are (were) 5 Lucky Bocks in the white (today!) icebox. 9:50. (no. 2) after finishing that (immediately after, during, in fact) the strange thing is there’s so much left out. last night finished reading The Vicar of Wakefield. the bluejays and cardinals that called on the way to school. my beard suddenly seems soft (that thought off some day-dreaming about talking to poetry students). reread (for the last “making” time) “the 14,” the magazine; it is all set. the poems there, here now, seemed so abstract, compared with what I’m used to, but that in a way intensely and properly shaking feeling and talk, tonight. the revolution (Mara gets up, starts drinking Pepsi) and all that. (yellow sweater).

It is Monday, I am twelve years old, summer still feel like summer to me... Ernest Green My elementary school principal was white I only had one white teacher, she was named after the juice the astronauts took into space, Tang, I got some Tang at home...did you hear about the little girls who got killed while we was in Sunday School yesterday? Elizabeth Eckford I live in Baltimore and so do you, your people the raw and stinky crew, my daddy a big shot on the Avenue your daddy can't buy a pair of shoes... Jefferson Thomas One little girl was named Addie Mae, just liek my aunt from South Carolina, and when I come home from church everybody was cryin about the news from Alabama...I know Alabama Alabama was on the math test today— If you going 65 miles an hour leaving Richmond near where my cousin live and you drive for twelve hours straight will get you to Alabama? hell no, cause Alabama in hell ... Terrance Roberts The bus is hot, the white neighborhood full of angry faces just two miles from where we live, angry faces I see at night when I look out the window and wonder why I have to sit next to white children to be smart...I was smart all the time, my mama told me so when I did things the right way, extra things, good things, smart is knowin when somethin's missing... Carlotta Walls LaNier I like Malcom X because he looks like me when I am so mad I can't stand myself, when my cousins take my model car shelf down, break up my cats and then dare me to fight, when I have to walk from the white school home through the white neighborhood when I miss the bus or when I get a beatin for what my friend did and he get a beatin, too, but mine hurt more because he did it, not me, so I like Malcom X. He so mean, Mr. Green, he so mean...you got to be mean in Chicago... Minnijean Brown When I was fourteen a boy kissed me when we were walking to the movies, he sneaked me, and I tried not to smile because kissing is a sin and all the while I was so full of hallelujah on the inside, on the way to the movies we go to now because somebody made a way somehow, standing in lines with protest signs, dogs barking all around, so I make sure I sound educated when Henry sneaks to kiss me on the way to the movies...we have all kinds of movies in Philadelphia... Gloria Ray Karlmark New York is faster than yesterday, been here and gone before you remember it ain't here no more, we go downtown in the middle of tomorrow when it still be today, New York is faster than yesterday, I got a quarter for your ten dollar bill, give it to me I'll pay your cleaners bill because New York is faster than yesterday, and a high school diploma is all a genius like me will ever need in a city where a thrill is more to me if you will believe me...and believe me you will... Thelma Mothershed What a word will do, my momma used to say at night when her work was done, rearing back in that chair of hers with the stuffin fallin out of the arms, what a word will do when you know what words are for, she would say, layin her head back, closing her eyes and settling down inside some dream. She never told us her dreams when we asked her, she just said we would know when the moon turned over three times and ghosts rose up out of the sea. Mama was half out of this world, in California we all the way in it... Melba Patillo Beals Little Rock Nine, Shaking the line Between white no And black oh yes, I'll walk all over What is mine, thanks To Little Rock Nine.

After the news, the forecaster crowed With excitement about his bad tidings: Eighteen inches of snow! Take cover! A little shiver ran through the community. Children abandoned their homework. Who cared about the hypotenuse now? The snowplow driver laid out his long johns. The old couple, who’d barked at each other At supper, smiled shyly, turned off the TV, And climbed the stairs to their queen-size bed Heaped high with blankets and quilts. And the aging husky they failed to hear Scratch the back door, turned around twice In the yard, settled herself in the snow, And covered her nose with her tail.

Both guitars run trebly. One noodles Over a groove. The other slushes chords. Then they switch. It’s quite an earnest affair. They close my eyes. I close their eyes. A horn Blares its inner air to brass. A girl shakes Her ass. Some dude does the same. The music’s Gone moot. Who doesn’t love it when the bass Doesn’t hide? When you can feel the trumpet peel Old oil and spit from deep down the empty Pit of a note or none or few? So don’t Give up on it yet: the scenario. You know that it’s just as tired of you As you are of it. Still, there’s much more to it Than that. It does not not get you quite wrong.

Little soul little stray little drifter now where will you stay all pale and all alone after the way you used to make fun of things

little tree little silent Christmas tree you are so little you are more like a flower who found you in the green forest and were you very sorry to come away? see          i will comfort you because you smell so sweetly i will kiss your cool bark and hug you safe and tight just as your mother would, only don't be afraid look          the spangles that sleep all the year in a dark box dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine, the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads, put up your little arms and i'll give them all to you to hold every finger shall have its ring and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy then when you're quite dressed you'll stand in the window for everyone to see and how they'll stare! oh but you'll be very proud and my little sister and i will take hands and looking up at our beautiful tree we'll dance and sing "Noel Noel"

There was a little turtle. He lived in a box. He swam in a puddle. He climbed on the rocks. He snapped at a mosquito. He snapped at a flea. He snapped at a minnow. And he snapped at me. He caught the mosquito. He caught the flea. He caught the minnow. But he didn't catch me.

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold, But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm; Besides I can tell where I am use'd well, Such usage in heaven will never do well. But if at the Church they would give us some Ale. And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale; We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day; Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray, Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing. And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring: And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church, Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch. And God like a father rejoicing to see, His children as pleasant and happy as he: Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.

A courtier speaks to Ch’in Shih-huang-ti, ca. 210 B.C. Highness, the former walls were helpless. They stood alone in the middle of small fields protecting nothing. A single peasant’s holding engulfed each one as it ran briefly, straight from noplace off to noplace, with ruinous steps of broken stone at both ends. Only head-high, without the towers, gates and towns of your great wall, they stuck where they were, never rising over hills or curving through valleys: nothing but shoddy masonry and a mystery: who built them, how long ago, what for? They seemed to have no role but balking the reaper and the ox; their bases made islands in the flashing scythe-strokes, where wild flowers and shrubs sprouted. So all the people praise you for burying such walls and their memory in your vast one, which joins them, stretching far beyond where they once crumbled to hold your Empire: a wall which therefore can never have an end but has to go on extending itself forever. How useful, how cogent your wall is: a pale for the civilized, a dike against the wild people outside, who trade their quiet human blood for the rage of gods, tearing men to pieces, throwing them, watching them fall. In burying those little walls, Lord, you have covered our shame at our ancestors, best forgotten, whose mighty works were so pointless, or so pitiably useless. Was all their effort so that daisies could grow in fissures? So that some human work would rise over the flats and weather till it seemed not human? Only so that something of ours could be like trees and rocks: docile-seeming, yet sullenly opposed to use, and when compelled, only half serving, reserving from the functions that we give them a secret and idle self. The peasants would make lean-tos for cattle against those walls: they served for this alone. Now scholars, Lord, are saying the gods are not bulls and cows. That in ancient times we herded these animals to keep from starving and going naked, and so came the old custom of thinking them gods—from dependence. In my youth, I know, the peasants said just the opposite. Worship came first. The awesome bull and cow were gathered to be adored more easily, till people noticed how they let themselves be driven and penned. Next came the first murders against these gods, and the careful observation that they stood to be killed. And so their cult became contempt of beings that would live with us and submit to our crimes and hunger, and we began to breed them. That is why, the farmer says, cattle are honoured, murdered, eaten, cherished with labour that makes him their slave, and that is why in summer he exults in blood, but shivers with fear, with exhausted terror and regret, and sinks into stunned revelry all winter, eating the salted meat, getting children, his house closed up with snow, himself awake as if he slept, living as if he had already died, and rich, happy as if he were a buried worm. Is God, then, Highness, the fat flaccidity of cattle? Myself, I don’t like to wonder anymore. I only hope lifelong service earns what I ask: the command of some far bastion on your wall where it curves out into the unsettled wastes beyond any field, and the barrenness inside is indistinguishable from that without. This is the reward and end of life I want: to be a point, though infinitely small and far from you, in that wide circle centred on your great self. I see myself arriving to take charge of my troops. I look down from the tower: bare plains, outcrops of ice and rock, vast restless stirrings of grey grasses and dark-veined overcast, the cold wind’s hissing. Year after year the same, waiting for an assault that never comes, straining to glimpse our naked enemies creeping blended with their stony soil: nothing but legend, it may be. Maybe a morning will rise when, waking, I find that I’ve forgotten which way is north, and can’t tell if I am turned outward to danger or inward, Highness, to you. The sun invisible, a murky light diffused throughout featureless cloud, and the wall so long no curve appears—it seems to stretch out straight endlessly east and west: what clue will there be which way to face my people for the attack? It will be crucial then to show no doubt. My orders, I vow, though ignorant, will be crisp.