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It’s as if she were an earn, gebidende prey for her eyrie. Perched alertly, a hægtesse on their innards. In bitter morgenceald, her hoar-glittered feathers. Suddenly she sees a fox on the westene. At that she rouses, heaved up on high, and heads straight at him, in harrowing hæste. Hearing her, he freezes his tail. He’s terrified. Sees,bestelð, with ēagan flashing, talons overtake him, dash him down in torment, overtake him again, swengeð him on the eorðan. One yelp as she pincers his liver. Wyrd—pierces aorta.

Has anyone described the smell of wishbones drying on the kitchen sill or the smell of glass, or the bucket of water lifted from the well we go to when death takes the last thirst from someone we love? After my mother died, sometimes I'd take the one piece of her clothing I'd kept to bed and bury my face in her flowered blouse to smell her last skin, but even from the first it was futile. What I got was the smell of goneness, the smell of screen doors where moths have spent their wing powder beating failingly to reach the light. My massage therapist said she felt grief in my body like hard empty boxes. I felt like I was always handling dough, never wanting the kneading to be done, never wanting to bake the bread that meant the end of something having to do with a mother and daughter in a kitchen. My mother has been gone for years, and I begin to see, in the spots on the backs of my hands, in the shelf my cheekbones make for my cheeks, in the way I hold my mouth against gravity's pull, that I carry her with me, my skin, her skin, her last skin.

Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground that’s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days. Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light making a music in the streets we wish we could keep. Last snow. That’s what we’ll think for weeks to come. Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry. We could head north and north and never let this season go. Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light, knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves. Stubborn calendar of bone. Last snow. Now it must always be so.

April 3, 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing Airport .......................    hello hello hello    ...    Weiwei    ...    where have you been?    ...    I see you in dreams    ...    bleeding    ...    in the darkness of the sun    ...    81 spots in the flame    ...    each a nightmare one cannot wake up from    ...    Weiwei    ...    the last son    ...    you told me as we said goodbye    ...    your last night on the Lower East Side    ...    未未    ...    the last child of your Mother and Father    ...    born in the labor camp    ...    exiled from Beijing to the far desert    ...    watching your Father clean public latrines for singing the truth    ...    beaten cursed spat upon at every street corner    ...    why did you want to return?    ...    I asked    ...    did nyc streets no longer stir your blood?    ...    or the blackjack in Atlantic City get stale?    ...    you smiled    ...    as you flung dumpling skins out of my 13th floor window    ...    I need to go home    ...    to my father    ...    I need to speak    ...    speak indeed    ...    Weiwei    ...    with your big mouth that earned whips and bricks ever since you learned to talk    ...    and love from the people    ...    the small    ...    the poor    ...    the nameless    ...    babies poisoned by fake milk who had no time to cry mama    ...    children crushed under 
schools    ...    their bags flew across the sky like a dragon    ...    seeking their names    ...    you raked through the rubble    ...    through government files    ...    hide-and-seek with cops    ...    beaten until your brain hemorrhaged    ...    and you speak    ...    in Germany    ...    Tiananmen Square    ...    you speak    ...    watching your studio ransacked    ...    bulldozed    ...    and you speak    ...    threatened    ...    under house arrest    ...    and you speak    ...    inviting the guards into your studio for a cup of tea    ...    and you speak    ...    I’m used to pain    ...    you say    ...    and I’m ready to die suddenly or to disappear    ...    I’m the last son    ...    you say    ...    to your tormentors’ eyes    ...    I’m here for you    ...    so your babies will never again have to drink milk laced with poison    ...    so your daughter will never wonder when the classroom ceiling will drop on her    ...    so your parents will have shelter medicine food    ...    so you will never have to work at this job    ...    avoiding my eyes as you burn cigarettes into my chest    ...    push my face under the water    ...    I’m here for you    ...    all of you who speak the truth    ...    for China    ...    hello hello hello    ...    未未    ...    I mean why can’t you keep your mouth shut and enjoy what you have    ...    I mean you got money    ...    I mean you got fame    ...    I mean you got a beautiful wife and a two-year-old son    ...    don’t you want him to grow up like a normal child?    ...    but I am the son    ...    the last son of China    ...    
I have to speak as long as I have breath    ...    no matter how thin    ...    even if  you tear out my tongue    ...    I’ll still have my teeth    ...    even if you pull out my teeth    ...    I’ll still have my eyes    ...    even if you gouge out my eyes    ...    I’ll still have my ears    ...    even if you pierce my eardrums    ...    I’ll still have my hands    ...    even if you chop off my hands    ...    I’ll still have my guts    ...    even if you grind up my guts    ...    I’ll still have my heart that won’t stop beating    ...    even if you smash my heart into a million pieces    ...    they will turn into a billion sunflower seeds    ...    I mean how can you stop a sunflower from facing the sun    ...    how can you stop the sun from lighting up the earth    ...    hello hello hello    ...    Ai Weiwei    ...    
11 weeks have passed    ...    81 days and nights    ...    1,944 hours    ...    that’s 6,998,400 heartbeats from each of us    ...    whose heartstrings are tied to yours    ...    未未    ...    the last son of China    ...    艾未未    ...    pulse of the earth    ................

I am afraid after reading all these so-called initiation books that some cortege of boot lickers will enter my room while I am sleeping and suck my eyes out with soda straws they will be older men and women much like the amanuenses with bad breath in the principal’s office who call up and tell on you the Unferths of the world better beware I know Jesus would have kicked your teeth in you couldn’t pull that shit on him he was telling his buddies one night boys I’m glad y’all decided to come on up and eat supper with me I hadn’t got much there’s a few things I’d like to say at this time Matthew says to Simon I sure as hell don’t know what he’s got us here this time for I’m beginning to wonder you talked to him lately yea I was shooting the shit with him on the mountain but I want to tell you this Matthew don’t never come up on him when he’s alone he jumped on me I thought he was going to kill me he was just walking around just talking to himself waving his arms like he does he’s worse than John Jude put his hand up to his mouth and said down the table I think Jesus is going off his rocker get Simon to tell you what he asked me Simon says he didn’t want to talk about politics or dreams or nothing he just said Jude next time y’all are over in Mesopotamia why don’t you pick me up a few bottles of that wine they make over there sure thing Jesus I says well now the boss is talking he is saying I asked y’all up here because frankly I’ve been feeling a little sick lately and I want to make sure y’all know what to do in case anything happens I know one of you is going to do me in I know that but goddamnit y’all know those people in town are after my ass the other night I walked down the streets in a disguise and I seen a couple of you messing around and drinking with the soldiers what’s going to happen if one of you gets drunk and lets it slip where I’m hiding out then I’ll be in a fix you know if they was to find me they going to cut me y’all ever think about that and Peter ain’t you ever going to get it straight what you’re supposed to do give me one of those biscuits Judas and go outside and take a look-see I got you Jesus Judas says John leans over he says been catching any fish Peter oh well I been getting a few of a morning they ain’t biting too good now you know on account of this blamed weather nobody is even listening to Jesus he’s just talking to himself like he was crazy Matthew says I believe he’s been hitting that wine a little too hard don’t you reckon Jesus says another thing I told all of you it’d be better if you didn’t get involved with women now just listen to that little two-faced bastard James the Lesser says we all know what he’s up to shacking up with all those town girls the other night he was dressed fit to kill and drunk as six hundred dollars a rolling around in the mud like a hog kissing that whore’s foot why shit I wish he’d let us in on what he really does Thomas spoke up for once he says I know what you mean the other day Andrew and I asked him about some scripture he said leave me alone I don’t know nothing about that shit and then we seen him cussing out a priest over at the temple he knew more about it than the elder did another thing Matthew says I wish he’d start writing what he wants done down and do it so I can read it you know as well as I do that damned Peter can’t keep it straight he won’t get anything right Bartholomew says don’t make no difference atoll cause Paul is going to tell it like he wants to that’s for damned sure all the time Jesus just mumbling to himself wine spilt all over his robe the rest of them chattering and cussing trying to figure him out John the Baptist about the only one Jesus can count on except for crazy John is banging his goblet on the table he is saying now ain’t this a sight spitting in the lord’s face at his own birthday party I’ll swan Brother John why don’t you tell Jesus what the real problem is the crazy one says everyone of y’all is chickenshits you are afraid to look those elders in the eye and tell them what you think ya’ll get up on a rock to talk and you see a soldier coming and you say anybody seen a stray mule Jesus is saying to himself I’m going to pull those temples down if I have to get me a rope and tie it to a pillar and a jackass and do it myself wake up Jesus Philip says Paul who hadn’t touched a drop gets up and gets his paper out and says the nature of the problem Jesus is this the people don’t believe you those fellows in the temples have got it all organized all they have to do is send out stooges and hire a couple of rednecks who make out like they’re crippled they have a big gathering they say the same things you say they pull off a fake healing the redneck’s wife stands up she says LIE he ain’t lame he’s just drunk and so all the people go home saying those christians what a bunch of wind see Jesus they are using your material but they ain’t coming through so that is making you an enemy of the people we just got to get organized as is proved here today by your followers carrying on as they did so I’m getting sold down the river by the elders and their hirelings uh that’s right Jesus ask anybody here why I didn’t think they’d do that he says I told you a long time ago not to keep talking with them temple people John says you should a know’d what they was up to ain’t nobody going to understand you why you ought to know that when we first run on to you we had second thoughts we thought you was crazy there’s probably still some sitting down here right this second that still thinks you are a crazy one but Jesus you should a known we been through a lot together we go a long way back you should a listened all they wanted was you they liable to get you yet then they won’t have no competition they want to keep feeding the hogs the same slop they the ones that want to get fat man you listening to me Jesus he says ok if that’s the way they want to do things at the temple I’m going to change my tactics I going out after these chillun more than I have been they’ll know I’m telling the truth I still got a few things up my sleeve left what’s that Paul says I’m going to do a few things can’t nobody follow we could always go back to biting the heads off fish and chickens Peter says why don’t you let us in on it for a change Paul says we follow you around like we were a bunch of sheep picking up your tab bailing you out of jail coming up here all the time for supper and what do we get to eat nothing why can’t you have a little faith in us Jesus ok this is what we going to do he says hold on who is that walking up the steps it’s just Judas how does it go boy Jesus says and the other one answers just fine Jesus just fine and John the Baptist turns around he says to the one who has just slipped in boy didn’t I see you talking to some white folks the other day here endeth with a chord on the guitar that’s how the men did Jesus like he was old like he was young just like Elvis did to Big Dad Arthur I know just like another blind singer the men come down to see with their equipment they get his song they pay him twenty dollars and he don’t hear from them ever again except sometimes in the mail on Christmas when one of them might send a five dollar check there won’t nobody cash oh tell me brother how do the old men feel who were young as purple flowers from Hawaii once when they listen to their songs coming in over a borrowed radio tell me don’t they take up a notch in they belt don't they tie another knot in they headband don't they wring that sweat out have mercy Jesus deliver me from the lawyers and the teachers and the preachers and the politicking flies can’t you hear them buzz can’t you hear them bite another chunk out of me oh brother I am death and you are sleep I am white and you are black brother tell me I am that which I am I am sleep and you are death we are one person getting up and going outside naked as a blue jay rolling our bellies at the moon oh brother tell me you love me and I’ll tell you too I want to know how do they like it when the ones who sung shake they leg on the Television I want to know Jesus don’t a blind man count no more some by signs others by whispers some with a kiss and some with a gun and some with a six bit fountain pen whoa lord help me and my brother help us get through this tookover land

socalled swan of avon n/t but a beaurocrat buggering the buttercups goy from the waist up now soldiers’re the ones making offers and fucking caravaggio posters maybe the artist had bothered about melancholia suddenly xe finds xemself walking down some dark corridor california was truly the promised land for a minute there video marlboro to show us shoppingcart in dingy water and then turn melancholical sign reads no squatting switchd on the cathode ray at yr coronation the bomb droppd w/ regular monotony leaving us wanting a to zed dampened a grid satyrical deliria pan’s baallet in a black tutu who have the inclination but even whose    necromancer— firelit but dred— —commandeering meadows— protests were pathetic

I was involved in the serious business of ripping apart my own body. I’d run my fingers over it, seeking but never finding the right point of entry, so having to tear one myself, though midway through I’d always tire, and let night enter like a silver needle, sewing my eyelids shut. This was not an original practice, but thinking, for a time, that it was felt like being able to choose when spring would arrive: engineering an April that opened like a parasol, even in thoroughest winter.

A long time have I known you... Why, Full eighteen years, I must confess! All pink are you; pale, blear am I. Winters, mine; yours, spring’s comeliness! White cemetery lilacs sprout Over my temples; but soon, now, The grove entire will bloom about My head, to shade my withered brow. Pallid, my sun sinks low, and will Soon fade on the horizon’s face; And on the mournful, doleful hill I see my final dwelling-place. Oh! May you from your lips let fall A kiss, too long delayed, upon My own, so that beneath my pall I may rest, heart at peace, anon...

for Lem As if your half-witted tongue Spoke with an eloquence Death bestows, I heard your voice Muffled through the dark Layers of cemetery loam: “They found me black-suited In the shuttered half-dark, my eyes Dug like claws into the clouds’ Soft feather-turnings. What kept me Separate the broiling sun Of intellect now shone on fiercely: In the sheep-pens stinking Of dung and lanolin, I buried my face in the ewe’s Swollen side and listened For the lamb the way The night sky listens To the synapse-fire Of meteors, the fibrillating Heartbeat of the stars. I heard the cells crackle Into being, the embryonic Brain begin to burn: Hunger. Thirst. Beneath my ear My own disastrous birthing, The umbilicus strangling Like a whip around my neck, Shoved through the momentary Breach memory tore open— Dying revealed to me my birth, How half my brain went dark, One side of a universe Pinched out like a candle: Just smart enough to sense My difference, yet not know why— Even my death was the thrust Of a bewildering punchline: On Thanksgiving Morning mouthwatering Pain shoved like a spit From my bowels to my brain.”

I The telephone keeps talking to itself: Garbage in the streets, a butterfly, A rubber raft abandoned, floating out to sea, And late last night nearby, a conflagration— If you knew half the secrets I can tell, The accidents, the threats, the promises, All anonymous, and the voices That, like a demoniac, I have: An unwilling rhyme, a cry for help, An order for a pound of stewing beef And someone begging someone to come back— All of these proceed from my black mouth, All and more are locked in my black heart, Information, long distances, wrong numbers. II The clock at first was fast and now has stopped That holds all of our lifetimes in its hands. III “We sleep and wake watched over by machines. Are these intelligent objects our servants merely? Are they our closet masters, maybe? Will we be accomplices and equals one day?” Tool-and-Die Makers’ Manual Newly revised, 1964 IV The gun, the peppermill, the gramophone, The bee, the salamander and the swan— To be explicit, what have they in common? The corkscrew, the stethoscope, the laundromat, The lyre bird, the python and the wombat, How do these differ from the domestic cat? Is it a question of theirs and ours or this and that? What reconciles the wireless and the whale? Did he who made the lamb invent the wheel? And what was wisdom doing all the while? A catastrophe and a category will Swallow sardines and supermarkets whole. V But you or rather thou, to be archaic, Always demanding, never dull but sometimes sick, Intimate machinery, my body! Whose only raison d’etre is to be: Your pleasures and your pains are your own business; Don’t ask me for a taste or a caress, Who, when I weep, weep tear of glass, Round and brittle. Your appetites embarrass Me. Mine tire you. Old Thing, The moral is, the moral is, Keep going, And perhaps we shall meet again at the Resurrection— The wonder is, what then I shall put on?