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To Flossie II 1 Why go further? One might conceivably rectify the rhythm, study all out and arrive at the perfection of a tiger lily or a china doorknob. One might lift all out of the ruck, be a worthy successor to—the man in the moon. Instead of breaking the back of a willing phrase why not  try to follow the wheel through—approach death at a walk, take in all the scenery. There’s as much reason one way as the other and then—one never knows—perhaps we’ll bring back Eurydice—this time! _______________ Between two contending forces there may at all times arrive that moment when the stress is equal on both sidesso that with a great pushing a great stability results givinga picture of perfect rest. And so it may be that once uponthe way the end drives back upon the beginning and a stoppage will occur. At such a time the poet shrinks from thedoom that is calling him forgetting the delicate rhythms ofperfect beauty, preferring in his mind the gross buffetingsof good and evil fortune. 2 Ay dio! I would say so much were it not for the tunes changing, changing, darting so many ways. One step and the cart’s left you sprawling. Here’s the way! and—you’re hip bogged. And there’s blame of the light too: when eyes are humming birds who’ll tie them with a lead string? But it’s the tunes they want most,—send them skipping out at the tree tops. Whistle then! who’d stop the leaves swarming; curving down the east in their braided jackets? Well enough—but there’s small comfort in naked branches when the heart’s not set that way. ________________ A man’s desire is to win his way to some hilltop. Butagainst him seem to swarm a hundred jumping devils. Theseare his constant companions, these are the friendly imageswhich he has invented out of his mind and which are inviting him to rest and to disport himself according to hiddenreasons. The man being half a poet is cast down and longsto rid himself of his torment and his tormentors. 3 When you hang your clothes on the line you do not expect to see the line broken and them trailing in the mud. Nor would you expect to keep your hands clean by putting them in a dirty pocket. However and of course if you are a market man, fish, cheeses and the like going under your fingers every minute in the hour you would not leave off the business and expect to handle a basket of fine laces without at least mopping yourself on a towel, soiled as it may be. Then how will you expect a fine trickle of words to follow you through the intimacies of this dance without—oh, come let us walk together into the air awhile first. One must be watchman to much secret arrogance before his ways are tuned to these measures. You see there is a dip of the ground between us. You think you can leap up from your gross caresses of these creatures and at a gesture fling it all off and step out in silver to my finger tips. Ah, it is not that I do not wait for you, always! But my sweet fellow—you have broken yourself without purpose, you are—Hark! it is the music! Whence does it come? What! Out of the ground? Is it this that you have been preparing for me? Ha, goodbye, I have a rendezvous in the tips of three birch sisters.Encouragez vos musiciens! Ask them to play faster. I will return—later. Ah you are kind.—and I? must dance with the wind, make my own snow flakes, whistle a contrapuntal melody to my own fugue! Huzza then, this is the dance of the blue moss bank! Huzza then, this is the mazurka of the hollow log! Huzza then, this is the dance of rain in the cold trees.

XIV 1 The brutal Lord of All will rip us from each other—leave the one to suffer here alone. No need belief in god or hell to postulate that much. The dance: hands touching, leaves touching—eyes looking, clouds rising—lips touching, cheeks touching, arm about . . . Sleep. Heavy head, heavy arm, heavy dream—: Of Ymir’s flesh the earth was made and of his thoughts were all the gloomy clouds created. Oya! ________________ Out of bitterness itself the clear wine of the imagination will be pressed and the dance prosper thereby. 2 To you! whoever you are, wherever you are! (But I know where you are!) There’s Dürer’s “Nemesis” naked on her sphere over the little town by the river—except she’s too old. There’s a dancing burgess by Tenier and Villon’s maitresse—after he’d gone bald and was skin pocked and toothless: she that had him ducked in the sewage drain. Then there’s that miller’s daughter of “buttocks broad and breastes high.” Something of Nietzsche, something of the good Samaritan, something of the devil himself,—can cut a caper of a fashion, my fashion! Hey you, the dance! Squat. leap. Hips to the left. Chin—ha!—sideways! Stand up, stand up ma bonne! you’ll break my backbone. So again!—and so forth till we’re sweat soaked. ________________ Some fools once were listening to a poet reading hispoem. It so happened that the words of the thing spoke ofgross matters of the everyday world such as are nevermuch hidden from a quick eye. Out of these semblances,and borrowing certain members from fitting masterpiecesof antiquity, the poet began piping up his music, simplefellow, thinking to please his listeners. But they gettingthe whole matter sadly muddled in their minds made sucha confused business of listening that not only were theynot pleased at the poet’s exertions but no sooner had hedone than they burst out against him with violent imprecations. 3 It’s all one. Richard worked years to conquer the descending cadence, idiotic sentimentalist. Ha, for happiness! This tore the dress in ribbons from her maid’s back and not spared the nails either; wild anger spit from her pinched eyes! This is the better part. Or a child under a table to be dragged out coughing and biting, eyes glittering evilly. I’ll have it my way! Nothing is any pleasure but misery and brokenness. THIS is the only up-cadence. This is where the secret rolls over and opens its eyes. Bitter words spoken to a child ripple in morning light! Boredom from a bedroom doorway thrills with anticipation! The complaints of an old man dying piecemeal are starling chirrups. Coughs go singing on springtime paths across a field; corruption picks strawberries and slow warping of the mind, blacking the deadly walls—counted and recounted—rolls in the grass and shouts ecstatically. All is solved! The moaning and dull sobbing of infants sets blood tingling and eyes ablaze to listen. Speed sings in the heels at long nights tossing on coarse sheets with bruning sockets staring into the black. Dance! Sing! Coil and uncoil! Whip yourselves about! Shout the deliverance! An old woman has infected her blossomy grand-daughter with a blood illness that every two weeks drives the mother into hidden songs of agony, the pad-footed mirage of creeping death for music. The face muscles keep pace. Then a darting about the compass in a tarantelle that wears flesh from bones. Here is dancing! The mind in tatters. And so the music wistfully takes the lead.Ay de m í, Juana la Loca, reina de Espa ña, esa est á tucanta, reina mía!

XXII 1 This is a slight stiff dance to a waking baby whose arms have been lying curled back above his head upon the pillow, making a flower—the eyes closed. Dead to the world! Waking is a little hand brushing away dreams. Eyes open. Here’s a new world. _______________ There is nothing the sky-serpent will not eat. Sometimesit stops to gnaw Fujiyama, sometimes to slip its long andsoftly clasping tongue about the body of a sleeping childwho smiles thinking its mother is lifting it. 2 Security, solidity—we laugh at them in our clique. It is tobacco to us, this side of her leg. We put it in our samovar and make tea of it. You see the stuff has possibilities. You think you are opposing the rich but the truth is you’re turning toward authority yourself, to say nothing of religion. No, I do not say it means nothing. Why everything is nicely adjusted to our moods. But I would rather describe to you what I saw in the kitchen last night—overlook the girl a moment: there over the sink (1) this saucepan holds all, (2) this colander holds most, (3) this wire sieve lets most go and (4) this funnel holds nothing. You appreciate the progression. What need then to be always laughing? Quit phrase making—that is, not of course—but you will understand me or if not—why—come to breakfast sometime around evening on the fourth of January any year you please; always be punctual where eating is concerned. ________________ My little son’s improvisations exceed min: a round stoneto him’s a loaf of bread or “this hen could lay a dozengolden eggs.” Birds fly about his bedstead; giants lean overhim with hungry jaws; bears roam the farm by summerand are killed and quartered at a thought. There are interminable stories at eating time full of bizarre imagery,true grotesques, pigs that change to dogs in the telling,cows that sing, roosters that become mountains and oceansthat fill a soup plate. There are groans and growls, dunclouds and sunshine mixed in a huge phantasmagoria thatnever rests, never ceased to unfold into—the day’s poorlittle happenings. Not that alone. He has music which Ihave not. His tunes follow no scale, no rhythm—alone themood in odd ramblings up and down, over and over witha rigor of invention that rises beyond the power to followexcept in some more obvious flight. Never have I heard socrushing a critique as those desolate inventions, involvedhalf-hymns, after his first visit to a Christian Sunday school. 3 This song is to Phyllis! By this deep snow I know it’s springtime, not ring time! Good God no! The screaming brat’s a sheep bleating, the rattling crib-side sheep shaking a bush. We are young! We are happy! says Colin. What’s an icy room and the sun not up? This song is to Phyllis. Reproduction lets death in, says Joyce. Rot, say I. to Phyllis this song is! ________________ That which is known has value only by virtue of thedark. This cannot be otherwise. A thing known passes outof the mind into the muscles, the will is quit of it, saveonly when set into vibration by the forces of darknessopposed to it.

XXVII 1 This particular thing, whether it be four pinches of four divers white powders cleverly compounded to cure surely, safely, pleasantly a painful twitching of the eyelids or say a pencil sharpened at one end, dwarfs the imagination, makes logic a butterfly, offers a finality that sends us spinning through space, a fixity the mind could climb forever, a revolving mountain, a complexity with a surface of glass; the gist of poetry. D.C.al fin. 2 There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose-red grasses and you—in your apron running to catch—say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that puts wings to your heels, at your knees. 3 Sooner or later as with the leaves forgotten the swinging branch long since and summer: they scurry before a wind on the frost-baked ground—have no place to rest—somehow invoke a burst of warm days not of the past nothing decayed: crisp summer!—neither a copse for resurrected frost eaters but a summer removed   undestroyed a summer of dried leaves scurrying with a screech, to and fro in the half dark—twittering, chattering, scraping. Hagh! ________________ Seeing the leaves dropping from the high and low branches the thought rise: this day of all others is the one chosen, all other days fall away from it on either side and only itself remains in perfect fullness. It is its own summer, of its leaves as they scrape on the smooth ground it must build its perfection. The gross summer of the year is only a halting counterpart of those fiery days of secret triumph which in reality themselves paint the year as if upon a parchment, giving each season a mockery of the warmth or frozenness which is within ourselves. The true seasons blossom or wilt not in fixed order but so that many of them may pass in a few weeks or hours whereas sometimes a whole life passes and the season remains of a piece from one end to the other.

Who includes diversity and is Nature, Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also, Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing, Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover, Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the æsthetic or intellectual, Who having consider’d the body finds all its organs and parts good, Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories, The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States; Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons, Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.

I went to make kouign amann. It sounded Irish a

In a crumpled shirt (so casual for a god) Bow tucked loosely under an arm still jittery from battle He balanced himself on a flat boat painted black. Each wave as I kneel closer a migrant flag A tongue with syllables no script can catch. The many births you have passed through, try to remember them as I do mine Memory is all you have.

my mouth a cunt in reverse and my guts, nuts. I nose the dark nursery, belly for my dick spurting ink at shit. Fire. Arrow. Water. Shadow.

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

In December 1941, after Lvov had already been seized by Nazis while you labored diligently by day as a quiet feeder of lice in a virus lab and joined your heart to the resistance that would rise in Warsaw, my own country’s agents took me from my home in Lā‘ie, placed me in a jail cell in Honolulu and interrogated me for many days. Neither of us had thought of our poetry then, Zbigniew, not of the caustic sarcasm of your strophes stripped of pious words, not of the praises of the life I would lose like a lavish field of rice once bending with weight but blighted overnight by the black cowls of disease. I told them I was just a storekeeper who liked night fishing — no submarines was I signaling offshore, nothing but schooling fish did I hope would come to the sputtering lights of my torches that I stuck in the sand like stakes for growing beans in my family garden. The ocean knew of my intentions, lapping softly at my knees, curling in kind, foaming waters around the bones of my bare feet. And the winds knew of my 
poverty, sending me a cloudless night sky, stippling the lagoon with stalks of red flames. But my government questioners cited my language was the enemy’s, my academy in Hiroshima a military school, my citizen’s heart black as diesel. They sent me to a barracks on an island in Pearl Harbor where I could see the burnt wreckage of scores of ships, hear their moaning steel like drowned sailors who still cry out, throats choked with oil, from their watery graves, feel nothing but panic and regret as though a child had died, my hope wrapped in old newspapers and thrown away like offal cleaned from a fish the size of a man. Then to a ship bound for Oakland, and by train and truck with men like me, Japanese all, to Fort Missoula, and a cold wind like a dull razor scraping across my stubbled face. What was my crime except to belong to an enemy race? Why can they not see that I love, like them, the promise that is this land like a wife to whom we have sworn only faith and practiced devotion? I would wash her feet with water gathered in a canvas bucket, carry her burdens across canefields and over the shallows of our bay, ruffled with wind, if she would, yet once more as on her bridal evening, speak her vows and turn the soft bundles of her body, heaving like a warm tide in my arms, back to mine.