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O Mary, at thy window be, It is the wish'd, the trysted hour! Those smiles and glances let me see, That makes the miser's treasure poor: How blythely wad I bide the stoure, A weary slave frae sun to sun, Could I the rich reward secure, The lovely Mary Morison. Yestreen when to the trembling string The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha' To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard nor saw: Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, And yon the toast of a' the town, I sigh'd, and said amang them a', "Ye are na Mary Morison." O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die? Or canst thou break that heart of his, Whase only faut is loving thee? If love for love thou wilt na gie At least be pity to me shown: A thought ungentle canna be The thought o' Mary Morison.

A Monodrama Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves In a bed of daffodil sky, To faint in the light of the sun she loves, To faint in his light, and to die. All night have the roses heard The flute, violin, bassoon; All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon. I said to the lily, "There is but one With whom she has heart to be gay. When will the dancers leave her alone? She is weary of dance and play." Now half to the setting moon are gone, And half to the rising day; Low on the sand and loud on the stone The last wheel echoes away. I said to the rose, "The brief night goes In babble and revel and wine. O young lord-lover, what sighs are those, For one that will never be thine? But mine, but mine," so I sware to the rose, "For ever and ever, mine." And the soul of the rose went into my blood, As the music clash'd in the hall; And long by the garden lake I stood, For I heard your rivulet fall From the lake to the meadow and on to the wood, Our wood, that is dearer than all; From the meadow your walks have left so sweet That whenever a March-wind sighs He sets the jewel-print of your feet In violets blue as your eyes, To the woody hollows in which we meet And the valleys of Paradise. The slender acacia would not shake One long milk-bloom on the tree; The white lake-blossom fell into the lake As the pimpernel dozed on the lea; But the rose was awake all night for your sake, Knowing your promise to me; The lilies and roses were all awake, They sigh'd for the dawn and thee. Queen rose of the rosebud garden of girls, Come hither, the dances are done, In gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls, Queen lily and rose in one; Shine out, little head, sunning over with curls, To the flowers, and be their sun. There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;" And the white rose weeps, "She is late;" The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;" And the lily whispers, "I wait." She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead, Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

In the warmth of night I put feet to my plan: waited for my brothers to sleep. They’d spent the day sharpening their hooks, repairing the great net, filling gourds with fresh water. They’d bundled taro wrapped in leaves sitting below the cross seats. The bundles and the net would cover me, especially if I said the chant to slow my movement and my breathing. The moon became brighter like a big fish eye as the chant hooked me. I was holding my grandmother’s hook so tightly a little cut welled red between my closed knuckles. “Goodmorning, brothers,” I called and they cussed and moaned until the next chant took us a further hundred miles and then another until my chanting made them gasp as we settled on a patch of ocean black with fish. They forgave me, not that it matters. I took the bloody hook and said my business to the ocean. It worked. The fish rose and our descent was secured.

None of it’s there that you cared for, so familiar furniture and paintings. The medals aren’t there either I’m still there but it isn’t; I’m here; sword, I have sword — imagine — and disguising protect- ive the ancient helmet. Her head was cut off nonetheless. The man brought the head along to the doctor: the head said to. Shouldn’t we bring the body I asked in case he wants to re- attach them Oh, the head hadn’t thought of that. What do you have instead of a body, there? We have a wholeness of perception what we are asking you to do for us, write down our poems creates a body. Otherwise our body ... isn’t that we aren’t sensuous ... but we decohere, you must understand that the universe is always developing or changing its face — body — whatever; we have always been it but it’s never quite right ... pilot’s license; my pilot’s license is a fossil, you said. We need yours. We need your license. When Momma first, the very first hallucination that the decompression tube in her stomach was black ... It isn’t black I said over the phone well I thought it was she said, not being fanciful, and I was in a motel in Colorado at the time. Whose head was it really I repeat. For we never leave here and nothing fossilizes but stonelike mossy patterns might be made, colors transformed walk to the hospital, everyone’s mad at me, who cares? It was my whole soul transported and all its certainties that I existed, beneath all the legends, otherwise as joy.

What I envy in the open eyes of the dead deer hanging down from the rafters, its eyes still wet and glassy, but locked now into a vision of another life, is the way it seems to be staring at the moment when it died. The blue light falling through the window into this smoke-filled room is the same color as the mist coming down off the mountain that morning: the deer sees men with guns but also sees, beyond them, the endless mountains.

She perches high on the stand, gleaming whistle dangling, on her suit a dutiful, faded red cross. Mine her only life to guard, she does for a while watch the middle-aged woman who has nothing better to do than swim laps in the Y's indoor pool on a late Friday afternoon. I am slow, though, boring, length after predictable length of breaststroke or the duller lap of elementary backstroke perfectly executed within the taut confines of the brightly buoyed lane. So she abandons me to study split-ends, hangnail, wristwatch, until—the body of the whistle cupped loosely in her palm—her head nods toward shallow dreams. I've never felt so safe in my life, making flawless, practiced turns, pushing, invisible to reenter my own wake, reverse it.

Lift ev’ry voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise High as the list’ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won. Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chast’ning rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet Come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might, Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee; Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand. True to our God, True to our native land.

When the strong drag of the boy’s adolescence pulls through them, the family rises into thinness and begins to break like a wave. You turned away when I kissed you, the woman says. Why? Half-lidded days of early winter. When he points toward the woman, the boy looks at his hand the way dogs will. The boy’s jaw sets. As though behind his teeth, into the soft flesh of his throat, a new set of teeth were cutting through. A mouth for what? Each of them adopts a private view. Arguments veer every which way, and who can follow? A sequence of dark non sequiturs blows in. When one, when one word, when the word suicide enters the room where they are shouting, the system closes down, prematurely becalmed. The man writes, I am not given a subject but am given to my subject. I am inside it like a parasite. He sees the woman’s face contract at the approach of other futures than the one for which her face was prepared. So they inhabit their bodies like music, for a given time. And yet he continues to act as if there were times to come. I just want you to go away, one of them screams. Expressionless and flat as a tortilla, the afternoon moon over their house. She calls the man to a corner in the basement. Those aren’t spider eggs, he says, backing up. Those are its eyes. When the encounter with the self is volcanic, nothing can follow. Tearing open the cocoon to reveal itself, a boy within the family. As if they were waiting. As if inside experience, bright with meaning, there were another experience pendant, unnameable.

Men’s voices in the dark

1 God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. 2 Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sov'reign will. 3 Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head. 4 Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face. 5 His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding ev'ry hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flow'r. 6 Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.