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O tan-faced prairie-boy, Before you came to camp came many a welcome gift, Praises and presents came and nourishing food, till at last among the recruits, You came, taciturn, with nothing to give – we but look’d on each other, When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me.

The sky is high We shit on earth We look up the sky The earth gives birth To our future

Mother, I cannot mind my wheel; My fingers ache, my lips are dry: Oh! if you felt the pain I feel! But Oh, who ever felt as I! No longer could I doubt him true; All other men may use deceit: He always said my eyes were blue, And often swore my lips were sweet.

The letters still come for Mrs Watters, who must, at one time, have warmed this house and lived as we do. Mostly small matters — the rolled calendar that, had she stayed, might hang now where I drew the rusted nail, the catalogues, the last gas bill unpaid — and always Mrs Watters. So for me the spirit of the house is feminine, its whisper of the one who, constantly, draws letters that assume she has never gone. On which I weekly write, without conviction: 'No longer living here. Address unknown.'

Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.

Never mind the pins And needles I am on. Let all the other instruments Of torture have their way. While air-conditioners Freeze my coffee I watch the toaster Eating my toast. Did I press the right Buttons on all these Buttonless surfaces Daring me to press them? Did you gasp on seeing what The mailman just brought? Will the fellow I saw pedaling Across the bridge live long After losing his left leg, His penis, and his bike To fearlessness? Will his sad wife find Consolation with the Computer wizard called in Last year to deal with glitches? Did you defuse the boys’ Bomb before your house Was under water, same As everything else? Aunt Til grabbed her Silver hand mirror Before floating away. The dog yelped constantly, Tipping our canoe. Silly dog.

Pardon us for uttering a handful of words in any language, so cut loose are we from homes, and from His name that is still nameless, blessed be He. We raised a prayer house— that is, we broke new wood for one, but some tough burned it, snarling: “Carve only stones for the dead.” Damp ground, no fire, no psalm we all remember. But tall ships anchor here, and at low tide, people with wheat-colored hair look out to sea, just as we’d searched for land. “Pray if you must,” my father said, “and when prayer fails, a story, if it is all you have, will do.” Months past, we left Recife’s forced-worship laws in the year of their Lord sixteen hundred and fifty-four, for our new world, old-country Amsterdam. Leagues seaward, Spanish pirates slaughtered our scant crew, and all that was left of us (friends wheezed their last while they ragged us on) rose up on deck and tossed our bags in the sea. We watched the wake turn silver: kiddish wine cups, hanging bowls, a candelabrum for the promised altar, carved pointers. Books’ pages curled and sank, prayer shawls ballooned and, soaking, spiraled downward. Just as we stared, again we heard swords clank— a French ship, the Ste. Catherine(her prow had shone gold on a gray horizon), came to our port side and rescued us. In that commotion on deck, we crouched below—not out of fear, I swear, but stunned by luminous words that echoed oddly—beautifully—like lightning flickering through palls of thickset clouds. A jaunty captain rasped to us in hiding: “Where are you bound?” “Amsterdam. Old country.” “Where?” “Amsterdam.” “Antilles?” “No, Amsterdam.” “Yes, yes. Nieuw Am sterdam. I’ll see you get there safely.” He meant well, bless him. Ste. Catherine sailed to land at its tip no larger than a meadow, fanned out at its sides: Manhattan Island. Our new master, Stuyvesant, lashed us with phrases,wheffs, guzzads, that stung but were not fathomed, mercifully, when we came on a Sabbath, more than twenty men, women, a baby born at sea. Still cursing, he let us land, and heard our praise, then disappeared among lank citizens with faded skin who stride to the bay and brood on water that we trust and dread, and listen to tales unstamped by laws and never sacred.

(With the usual.) I In winter I get up at night, And dress by an electric light. In summer, autumn, ay, and spring, I have to do the self-same thing. I have to go to bed and hear Pianos pounding in my ear, And hear the janitor cavort With garbage cans within the court. And does it not seem hard to you That I should have these things to do? Is it not hard for us Manhat- Tan children in a stuffy flat? II It is very nice to think The world is full of food and drink; But, oh, my father says to me They cost all of his salaree. III When I am grown to man’s estate I shall be very proud and great; E’en now I have no reverence, ’Cause I read comic supplements. IV New York is so full of a number of kids I’m sure pretty soon we shall be invalids. V A child should always say what’s true, And speak when he is spoken to; And then, when manhood’s age he strikes, He may be boorish as he likes.

(for Monte Holcroft) These unshaped islands, on the sawyer’s bench, Wait for the chisel of the mind, Green canyons to the south, immense and passive, Penetrated rarely, seeded only By the deer-culler’s shot, or else in the north Tribes of the shark and the octopus, Mangroves, black hair on a boxer’s hand. The founding fathers with their guns and bibles, Botanist, whaler, added bones and names To the land, to us a bridle As if the id were a horse: the swampy towns Like dreamers that struggle to wake, Longing for the poets’ truth And the lover’s pride. Something new and old Explores its own pain, hearing The rain’s choir on curtains of grey moss Or fingers of the Tasman pressing On breasts of hardening sand, as actors Find their own solitude in mirrors, As one who has buried his dead, Able at last to give with an open hand.

Read much; the Mind, which never can be still, If not intent on Good, is prone to Ill. And where bright Thoughts, or Reas’nings just you find, Repose them careful in your inmost Mind. To deck his Chloe’s Bosom thus the Swain With pleasing Toil surveys th’enamel’d Plain, With Care selects each fragrant flow’r he meets, And forms one Garland of their mingled sweets.