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I act like I know it all. But you, you act like you know it all. We can’t both be wrong. Still, neither of us should have children. Your head’s in a sack. In a sack with a snake with two heads. And my head is even older than our initial calculations implied. I know many names for sitting cross-legged, none for never getting up again. You, you speak as if you just checked, but it’s not even up to you. Fox pulls a rabbit out of a duck and keeps the wound-up hounds upwind. Hedgehog carries one trick around like a small booth atop an elephant. And both of us, elephant and booth, carry from birth what can’t be cast off by dying. How can we corrupt the young? The young don’t even know we exist.

Know no name Why this holy day honed Hollow day haul I lost wind when wooden I can’t bear to be Unaided in hunt unhanded To haunt when strewn sound Who will be held in hand Brought sent Mooring at the shore Who’re you for For what fewer who wore Be called this wooer More who are the ones In horror to light will strew then sue for war

I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge. When I felt the bullet enter my heart I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary, Instead of running away and joining the army. Rather a thousand times the county jail Than to lie under this marble figure with wings, And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, “Pro Patria.” What do they mean, anyway?

In Abraham Lincoln’s city, Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle, The place where they brought him Wrapped in battle flags, Wrapped in the smoke of memories From Tallahassee to the Yukon, The place now where the shaft of his tomb Points white against the blue prairie dome, In Abraham Lincoln’s city ... I saw knucks In the window of Mister Fischman’s second-hand store On Second Street. I went in and asked, “How much?” “Thirty cents apiece,” answered Mister Fischman. And taking a box of new ones off a shelf He filled anew the box in the showcase And said incidentally, most casually And incidentally: “I sell a carload a month of these.” I slipped my fingers into a set of knucks, Cast-iron knucks molded in a foundry pattern, And there came to me a set of thoughts like these: Mister Fischman is for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff, And the street car strikers and the strike-breakers, And the sluggers, gunmen, detectives, policemen, Judges, utility heads, newspapers, priests, lawyers, They are all for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff. I started for the door. “Maybe you want a lighter pair,” Came Mister Fischman’s voice. I opened the door ... and the voice again: “You are a funny customer.” Wrapped in battle flags, Wrapped in the smoke of memories, This is the place they brought him, This is Abraham Lincoln's home town.

I waited and worked To win myself leisure, Till loneliness irked And I turned to raw pleasure. I drank and I gamed, I feasted and wasted, Till, sick and ashamed, The food stood untasted. I searched in the Book For rooted convictions, Till the badgered brain shook With its own contradictions. Then, done with the speech, Of the foolishly lettered, I started to teach Life cannot be bettered: That the warrior fails Whatever his weapon, And nothing avails While time and chance happen. That fools who assure men With lies are respected, While the vision of pure men Is scorned and rejected. That a wise man goes grieving Even in Zion, While any dog living Outroars a dead lion.

Among heart-shaped leaves the white fish gleams, red tail. Soft lotuses sleep.

Our shadows bring them from the shadows: a yolk-yellow one with a navy pattern like a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales. A fat 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purple and a patch of gray. One with a gold head, a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral fins like half-folded fans of lace. A poppy-red, faintly disheveled one, and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water. They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath us as we lean on the cement railing in indecisive late-December light, and because we do not feed them, they pass, then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop. “Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them, like a subplot or a motive, is a school of uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned, perhaps another species, living in the shadow of the gold, purple, yellow, indigo, and white, seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses, unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet.

Over our heads, trailing a wake of air and an enormous shadow as it passed, the falcon glided to its trainer’s fist and settled like a loaded weapon there. Then, while she fed the bird bit after bit of... what? rabbit? the trainer gave her talk: These birds, she said, prey on the small and weak, adding for the children’s benefit that this, though it seems cruel, is really good since otherwise the other rabbits, mice, squirrels, what have you, would run out of space and die of illness or a lack of food. I know what she was trying to get across, and I don’t doubt it would be healthier if we were more familiar than we are with how the natural world draws life from loss; and granted, nothing is more natural than death incarnate falling from the sky; and granted, it is better some should die, however agonizingly, than all. Still, to teach children this is how things go is one thing, to insist that it is good is something else—it is to make a god of an unsatisfactory status quo, this vicious circle that the clock hands draw and quarter, while the serpent bites its tail, or eats the dust, or strikes at someone’s heel, or winds up comprehended by a claw. She launched the bird again. We watched it climb out of the amphitheatre, headed toward the darkened spires of a nearby wood, then bank, then angle toward us one last time.

that never would he write his autobiography because his life seemed to him just so much filth that only a few points, bloody ones he still remembers but that he would never hesitate to reach into the filth to pull out what perhaps could serve as stuff for poetry his disgusting purpose in life * * * daß niemals er schreiben werde seine autobiographie daß ihm sein leben viel zu sehr als dreck erscheine daß auch nur wenige punkte, blutige er noch erinnere daß aber niemals er zögern werde in den dreck zu fassen um herauszuziehen was vielleicht einen stoff abgäbe für poesie seinen widerlichen lebenszweck

If it had worked out, I'd be on a train to Green Bay, not crawling up this building with the Air Corps on my ass. And if it weren't for love, I'd drop this shrieking little bimbo sixty stories and let them take me back to the exhibit, let them teach me to mambo and do imitations. They tried me on the offensive line, told me to take out the right cornerback for Nagurski. Eager to please, I wadded up the whole secondary, then stomped the line, then the bench and locker room, then the east end of town, to the river. But they were not pleased: they said I had to learn my position, become a team player. The great father Bear himself said that, so I tried hard to know the right numbers and how the arrows slanted toward the little o's. But the o's and the wet grass and the grunts drowned out the count, and the tight little cheers drew my arrow straight into the stands, and the wives tasted like flowers and raw fish. So I was put on waivers right after camp, and here I am, panty-sniffer, about to die a clown, who once opened a hole you could drive Nebraska through.