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I have utmost respect for you but in that moment if I were to get out of your way instead of walking up the stairs to my home I would have no respect for myself. I didn’t know why you couldn’t understand this when I told you. Instead you screamed at me and told me I was rude. And then you said someone of my age should know meaning that you were adding to my crime the fact that I am older than you. What am I to do. How many days have passed and I have no reason to think that your ancestors were stolen from their home in A- frica and because of my not knowing that this is true but thinking that it is possible it makes me certain that respect next time would be for me to step around. Maybe I could say quietly joining you for a moment in your vast and ancient sorrow that was my home

Who has not waked to list the busy sounds Of summer’s morning, in the sultry smoke Of noisy London? On the pavement hot The sooty chimney-boy, with dingy face And tattered covering, shrilly bawls his trade, Rousing the sleepy housemaid. At the door The milk-pail rattles, and the tinkling bell Proclaims the dustman’s office; while the street Is lost in clouds impervious. Now begins The din of hackney-coaches, waggons, carts; While tinmen’s shops, and noisy trunk-makers, Knife-grinders, coopers, squeaking cork-cutters, Fruit-barrows, and the hunger-giving cries Of vegetable-vendors, fill the air. Now every shop displays its varied trade, And the fresh-sprinkled pavement cools the feet Of early walkers. At the private door The ruddy housemaid twirls the busy mop, Annoying the smart ’prentice, or neat girl, Tripping with band-box lightly. Now the sun Darts burning splendor on the glittering pane, Save where the canvas awning throws a shade On the gay merchandise. Now, spruce and trim, In shops (where beauty smiles with industry) Sits the smart damsel; while the passenger Peeps through the window, watching every charm. Now pastry dainties catch the eye minute Of humming insects, while the limy snare Waits to enthrall them. Now the lamp-lighter Mounts the tall ladder, nimbly venturous, To trim the half-filled lamps, while at his feet The pot-boy yells discordant! All along The sultry pavement, the old-clothes-man cries In tone monotonous, while sidelong views The area for his traffic: now the bag Is slyly opened, and the half-worn suit (Sometimes the pilfered treasure of the base Domestic spoiler), for one half its worth, Sinks in the green abyss. The porter now Bears his huge load along the burning way; And the poor poet wakes from busy dreams, To paint the summer morning.

When men were all asleep the snow came flying, In large white flakes falling on the city brown, Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying, Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town; Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing; Lazily and incessantly floating down and down: Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing; Hiding difference, making unevenness even, Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing. All night it fell, and when full inches seven It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness, The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven; And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare: The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness; The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air; No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling, And the busy morning cries came thin and spare. Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling, They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing; Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees; Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder, ‘O look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’ With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder, Following along the white deserted way, A country company long dispersed asunder: When now already the sun, in pale display Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day. For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow; And trains of sombre men, past tale of number, Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go: But even for them awhile no cares encumber Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken, The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black. Cabs go down it, One, And then another. Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. The city is squalid and sinister, With the silver-barred street in the midst, Slow-moving, A river leading nowhere. Opposite my window, The moon cuts, Clear and round, Through the plum-coloured night. She cannot light the city; It is too bright. It has white lamps, And glitters coldly. I stand in the window and watch the moon. She is thin and lustreless, But I love her. I know the moon, And this is an alien city.

–"mu" fifty-third part– Some new Atlantis known as Lower Ninth we took leave of next, half the turtle’s back away. Whole bodies we saw floating, not only heads... Endless letting go, endless looking else- where, endless turning out to be otherwise... Woods all around where we came to next. We’d been eating wind, we’d been drinking wind, rumoring someone looked at God eye to eye... In what seemed a dream but we saw wasn’t we saw dirt sliding. We were back and all the buildings were gone. What were cliffs to us we wondered, blown dust of Bandiagara, what the eroding precipice we saw... Ground acorns ground our teeth now. All but all gums, we were where the Alone lived, came to a clearing lit by light so bright we staggered, Nub it was we knew we were still in... The mountain of the night a mound of nothing, Toulali’s burr what balm there was. Toulali’s burr what balm, remote though it was, lifetimes behind us now... Voice laryngitic, lost and lost again, blown grit rubbed it away... Someone had said something came to mind. Someone had sung something, what its words were no one could say. Sang it bittersweet, more brusque than bitter, song’s cloth endowment stripped... Choric strain, repeatedly slipped entablature. Given... Given endlessly again... No telling when but intent on telling, no telling what. Wished we were home again • Refugees was a word we’d heard, raw talk of soul insistent, adamant, the nonsong we sang or the song we nonsang, a word we’d heard we heard was us... Wept in our sleep, again one with what would never again be there, raw talk rummaged our book, the backs of our hands written on with cornmeal, the awaited ones reluctant again... The city of sad children’s outskirts we were in, woods notwithstanding, woods nonetheless, bright light the light we saw as we were jolted, raw talk spiraling away... We were there and somewhere else no matter where we were, everywhere more than where we were... Where the Alone lived we donned abalone-shell ornaments, light’s clarity conceded, night yet to relent, Toulali smoldered on, semisang, semispoke, wrestled with his tongue it seemed... We trudged in place, barely lifted our feet, backbeat hallowing every step we took,       moved us albeit we stayed put. We were where we were, somewhere else no matter where, evacuees a word we’d heard... Stutter step, stuck shuffle, dancelike, Toulali’s croon enticed us, toyed with us, ground gone under where we stood ______________ Day of the new dead or a new day of the dead, La Catrina had we been farther south... One of us out of Mexico remembered, with us from no one could say when... Day of the new dead a new day of the dead... Wind in off the water blew us there. A beat before. Beginning's beginning. Never to be there again... Beginning beaten back, aboriginal. The Alone collecting shells on Lone Coast... They were the awaited ones' grudge not the awaited ones, the awaited ones' wish not to be there... Grudge or its ghost, grudge against going, grudge to've been anywhere at all... Gnostic hostages down on all fours, then-again's beginning, beat before beginning be- grudged • We were in the woods again circling, not far from Lone Coast,        kids again, wondered why anything was. The city of sad children a mood swing away, we strode imagining nothing, redwoods everywhere, muttered barely audibly, “Nothing is, nothing ever was,” chill so intrinsic we shook... No lament was it, not exactly insight, precocious not quite what it was. Beginning's beginning it seemed we came abreast of, beginning's beginning's ghost... We shivered, would've shed chill's incumbency had we been able, close but absconded with, all but all done, sperichill we called it, numb... Had there been a song, had someone asked who sang it,         whitecaps rushing the beach we'd have said, whitecapped anacrusis we'd have said, long since there and gone... Lower Ninth had fallen off, protobeat, protobegin- ning, blow borne before it began borne again, the one coast it all had become now crumbling, world edge, world rebuff... Circling no end it seemed, except we stopped, stood looking at the sunlight streaming in. Churchical some would've said but we resisted, felt it that way but wanted not to. Not was no guarantee... Circling no end it seemed... Same crowded same crowded same, ad infinitum, beginning's beginning's bluff ______________

Classically stagy, goose-neck elegant, river’s third eye. Pencil thin head. S for a throat. Skeleton of a saint. Plodder, preening posturer. One foot, another. Up from the dank weeds.

What got done to me stains through my hopes of passing as fully human — though my “bad blood” won’t gloss that; to canter around its crimson rosette would tart up a harm more my postwar bad luck than a told shame’s mother. Still, the pose:Say yellow rose go hard & plain to Amarillo

Nothing by or for itself, the sound of eggs hard-boiling in the hot water echoed by the heavy rain that pours down the broken spout, the cowardly lion’s roar answered by the moos of the buffalo the bloody mouth of the one by the sharp and polished horns of the other, even Nelson Eddy could hear someone else singing in his bathtub the songs from his dumb movies though when I once drove up the vertical highway in Colorado to visit Elaine the Gnostic and take her to the stone mountain where her husband fell we drove back without talking though she touched my knee in gratitude and when we reached the very top there were no trees only flowers grew there accompanied by nothing the name of which was loneliness which Shelley the poet himself suffered from among his beleaguered women you’ll die remembering.

The girl hunting with her father approaches the strange man who has stopped at the end of his day to rest and look at the lake. Do you like geese? she asks. The man smiles. The girl draws a webbed foot from her pocket and places it in his hand. It's late fall and still the geese keep coming, two fingers spread against a caution-yellow sky. Before he can thank her, the girl has run off, down to the edge of the water. The man studies her father, about to bring down his third goose today—then ponders the foot: soft, pink, and covered with dirt like the little girl's hand. He slips it into his coat pocket, and holds it there.

Confess: it’s my profession that alarms you. This is why few people ask me to dinner, though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary. I wear dresses of sensible cut and unalarming shades of beige, I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser’s: no prophetess mane of mine, complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters. If I roll my eyes and mutter, if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene, I do it in private and nobody sees but the bathroom mirror. In general I might agree with you: women should not contemplate war, should not weigh tactics impartially, or evade the word enemy , or view both sides and denounce nothing. Women should march for peace, or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery, spit themselves on bayonets to protect their babies, whose skulls will be split anyway, or, having been raped repeatedly, hang themselves with their own hair. These are the functions that inspire general comfort. That, and the knitting of socks for the troops and a sort of moral cheerleading. Also: mourning the dead. Sons, lovers, and so forth. All the killed children. Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I don’t ask why , because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win. In my dreams there is glamour. The Vikings leave their fields each year for a few months of killing and plunder, much as the boys go hunting. In real life they were farmers. They come back loaded with splendour. The Arabs ride against Crusaders with scimitars that could sever silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse’s neck and a hunk of armour crashes down like a tower. Fire against metal. A poet might say: romance against banality. When awake, I know better. Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters, or none that can be finally buried. Finish one off, and circumstances and the radio create another. Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently to God all night and meant it, and been slaughtered anyway. Brutality wins frequently, and large outcomes have turned on the invention of a mechanical device, viz. radar. True, valour sometimes counts for something, as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right— though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition, is decided by the winner. Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades and burst like paper bags of guts to save their comrades. I can admire that. But rats and cholera have won many wars. Those, and potatoes, or the absence of them. It’s no use pinning all those medals across the chests of the dead. Impressive, but I know too much. Grand exploits merely depress me. In the interests of research I have walked on many battlefields that once were liquid with pulped men’s bodies and spangled with exploded shells and splayed bone. All of them have been green again by the time I got there. Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day. Sad marble angels brood like hens over the grassy nests where nothing hatches. (The angels could just as well be described as vulgar or pitiless , depending on camera angle.) The word glory figures a lot on gateways. Of course I pick a flower or two from each, and press it in the hotel Bible for a souvenir. I’m just as human as you. But it’s no use asking me for a final statement. As I say, I deal in tactics. Also statistics: for every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.