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(or a self / sung eulogy) Now, when I / die, dont you bury me On no lone prairie; And dont put me in no plain pine box (cause I left plenty cold cash!); And throw my cold butt in the deep blue see. Whatever you do, dont plant me / in no six feet of dirt; Just mash me, mash me, except for my dick, Which I want wrapped in a white / woman’s skirt. I dont want no preacher / man a-preaching Over me—cause I know where I am going. I dont want no tears, no flowers, No standing around and waiting / up / all hours. Just get a golden trumpet, and have Dizzy blow it. Cause I / wuz / Slick—and you damn well know it. No piano playing, no blues please; No moaning and groaning; Just lay me on the table, mash me Into my two-hundred-dollar suit, Red socks, black patent leather shoes, Polka-dot tie (make damn sure it’s silk— And dont forget it!) Take me out to my pink cadillac Prop me up / under the steering wheel, Tow me out to real high hill, Dig a hole—twenty feet long and twenty feet wide, Place a giant joint of reefer / weed by my side; Then leave me alone— And let me drive to hell in style!

Version 1 (1921) Yours is the shame and sorrow, But the disgrace is mine; Your love was dark and thorough, Mine was the love of the sun for a flower He creates with his shine. I was diligent to explore you, Blossom you stalk by stalk, Till my fire of creation bore you Shrivelling down in the final dour Anguish — then I suffered a balk. I knew your pain, and it broke My fine, craftsman's nerve; Your body quailed at my stroke, And my courage failed to give you the last Fine torture you did deserve. You are shapely, you are adorned, But opaque and dull in the flesh, Who, had I but pierced with the thorned Fire-threshing anguish, were fused and cast In a lovely illumined mesh. Like a painted window: the best Suffering burnt through your flesh, Undrossed it and left it blest With a quivering sweet wisdom of grace: but now Who shall take you afresh? Now who will burn you free From your body's terrors and dross, Since the fire has failed in me? What man will stoop in your flesh to plough The shrieking cross? A mute, nearly beautiful thing Is your face, that fills me with shame As I see it hardening, Warping the perfect image of God, And darkening my eternal fame. Version 2 (1928) Yours is the sullen sorrow, The disgrace is also mine; Your love was intense and thorough, Mine was the love of a growing flower For the sunshine. You had the power to explore me, Blossom me stalk by stalk; You woke my spirit, you bore me To consciousness, you gave me the dour Awareness — then I suffered a balk. Body to body I could not Love you, although I would. We kissed, we kissed though we should not. You yielded, we threw the last cast, And it was no good. You only endured, and it broke My craftsman's nerve. No flesh responded to my stroke; So I failed to give you the last Fine torture you did deserve. You are shapely, you are adorned But opaque and null in the flesh; Who, had I but pierced with the thorned Full anguish, perhaps had been cast In a lovely illuinined mesh Like a painted window; the best Fire passed through your flesh, Undrossed it, and left it blest In clean new awareness. But now Who shall take you afresh? Now who will burn you free From your body's deadness and dross? Since the fire has failed in me, What man will stoop in your flesh to plough The shrieking cross? A mute, nearly beautiful thing Is your face, that fills me with shame As I see it hardening; I should have been cruel enough to bring You through the flame.

Feel it — but remember, millennia have felt it — the sea and the beasts and the mindless stars wrestle it down today as ever

—for George Shelton Sometimes everything feels like a trick. Some days things seem to have been stolen from you. Cash to pay the bills, your sense of humor, friendship. You could almost believe those are what you look for as you walk around your neighborhood. But, no, instead, you get splashes of zinnias against stucco, cactus wrens, a pack of kids who ignore the sodium amber streetlights which just stuttered on, because it means their mothers want them home right this minute. And, on the corner variety store’s wall, a crude, sun-washed mural of the angel Gabriel defaced by thick black sideburns so he looks like a street punk, a strutting cholo, so he seems the only creature on earth who hasn’t heard the news that everything can be lost. His strong upper arms curving naked and graceful as the tan thighs of a slender, athletic girl. A girl he’s after, though she’s gotten bored waiting on the stoop and watching the sun set behind the foothills. Sky reddening until it slams into a blue that blesses anyone oblivious to all the negations, including the one, pal, where you think it’s possible to step out of your heart and leave it empty as an egg shell or a cardboard box. When you finally return home the tint of sky more or less matches the flash of a thrush as it swoops from limb to branch, acacia to willow. Standing at the kitchen counter, you pick through a carton of strawberries. Good juicy ones from the moldy and over-ripe. Choices that are easy. What do you trust anymore? The aproned man in the mercado said California strawberries, they’re the best this time of year. In bed, later, you remember the grocer, round belly under his apron, but as you start, nearly asleep, to tell your wife about him, how he talked about his deals, she starts reading aloud from a tattered bird guide, that the wood thrush is “essentially useful and worthwhile.” What is worthwhile?                      Now, remember.

My wife tells me she hears a beetle Scurrying across the kitchen floor. She says our daughter is dreaming Too loudly, just listen, her eyelids Are fluttering like butterflies. What about the thunder, I say, What about the dispatches from the police car Parked outside, or me rolling over like a whale? She tells me there’s a leaf falling And grazing the downstairs window, Or it could be glass cutters, diamonds, Thieves working their hands toward the latch. She tells me our son is breathing too quickly, Is it pneumonia, is it the furnace Suddenly pumping monoxides through the house? So when my wife says sleep, she means A closing of the eyes, a tuning Of the ears to ultra frequencies. (It is what always happens When there are children, the bed Becoming at night a listening post, Each little ting forewarning disaster.) Downstairs there is the sound Of something brushing against something else And I try to listen as my wife might listen, Insects, I say, dust on a table top, Maybe a knife’s edge against the palm. But she tells me it’s only The African violet on the windowsill Putting out another flower, And falls luxuriously into a dream Of being awake and vigilant. So the house grows noisier, There are clicks in the woodwork, There are drips, raps, clunks, things To make sense of, make benign. My son and daughter are sleeping calmly, And the stairs, yes, are creaking, The wind, I think, or maybe two men, Where’s the beaker of acid, The bowling ball, the war hoop I learned in second grade? So this is what it’s like when there’s No one left but you to love and defend. Outside there are cats in a fight And they remind me too much of babies crying. Then the bottle thrown against the stoop, The sound of something delicate shattered. My wife stirs, Be glad, she says, Sound doesn’t carry far, that you don’t hear The whole of it, cries in the night, Children in other cities, hurts, silences. And she’s right, I can’t hear the whole of it, Or else I hear too much and it’s noise Or I make it noise because it’s too much. So I begin homing in on something Around me, something distinct, my wife’s Breathing, a window’s rattle. Outside, Grass is lengthening in the dark, And sap running up the phloem of the maple, (Do I hear it? And how the stars must be wheeling!) And in the far room, my children’s Hearts are keeping time, for them, for us Who have begun to listen in earnest.

Monsignor, I believed Jesus followed me With his eyes, and when I slept, An angel peeled an orange And waited for me to wake up. This was 1962. I was ten, small as the flame Of a struck match, my lungs fiery From hard, wintery play. When I returned home, Legs hurting, I placed my hands on the windowsill And looked out—clouds dirty as towels And geese I have yet to see again Darkening the western sky. Monsignor, a machine Had painted on the eyes of my toy soldier, Little dots off-center, Almost on his cheeks. Such a cheap toy, I drowned him over and over in my bath, Drowned him until the painted-on eyes flaked off. Then a leg fell off—surge of dirty water Sunk him to the bottom. I now at this age place hands on the windowsill, My eyes nearly on my cheeks, My belly with its rising tide. There is no angel with an orange at the edge Of my bed. There is no soldier Of God. Only a pane between the inside And the outside, between this living And this dying. Monsignor, Saintly man of this child's wonderment, When will I see the geese again?

Alone with our madness and favorite flower We see that there really is nothing left to write about. Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things In the same way, repeating the same things over and over For love to continue and be gradually different. Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally And the color of the day put in Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting. Only then can the chronic inattention Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

The first warm day, and by mid-afternoon the snow is no more than a washing strewn over the yards, the bedding rolled in knots and leaking water, the white shirts lying under the evergreens. Through the heaviest drifts rise autumn’s fallen bicycles, small carnivals of paint and chrome, the Octopus and Tilt-A-Whirl beginning to turn in the sun. Now children, stiffened by winter and dressed, somehow, like old men, mutter and bend to the work of building dams. But such a spring is brief; by five o’clock the chill of sundown, darkness, the blue TVs flashing like storms in the picture windows, the yards gone gray, the wet dogs barking at nothing. Far off across the cornfields staked for streets and sewers, the body of a farmer missing since fall will show up in his garden tomorrow, as unexpected as a tulip.

To Herbert Cahoon 1. Black, under the candlesticks, moving in harness To a slow music, we hang the sepulchre And hear the herald angels sing, “He is not here.” It is mid-November. The first snows Have fallen silently over the town. I eat Black pudding at the altar while a dove Descends from the flaming tower. Later, Dr. Rashdall, behind whose scholarship A generation’s knowledge burns, will unmask Newman. But now it is mid-November. I eat black pudding and the dove descends. 2. In a hollow tree by the bridge, an owl awaits. The moon is full and white. The stars are out. Tall elms surround the statue of a nymph Where old Etonians, festive in Norfolk jackets, Commemorate D. G. Rossetti with a plaque. I relish the scene, remembering old Watts-Dunton Boasting, “Dogs have never bitten me!” that day We talked about Rossetti. Later, attacks of gout, That horrible baby that looked like Gosse, a wheelchair Wobbling on toward Trinity, webs covering my eyes. But tonight the moon is full, and white. Thus 1904 begins. 3. Of the far end of Marseilles and the islands: A dwarf climbing where the waves are luminous With phosphorescent lights, where foam bursts into flower, And the slow rise and fall of the ocean Rocks the world. Moving like a crab over the sand, He murmurs, “We can never praise the beauty of The world enough, my friend.” Later, death by starvation; Until the end, swinging on a trapeze for an hour Every day, longing to be tall.  He left Some wonderful paintings. I walk beside him now At the far end of Marseilles, toward the islands. 4. Now, now, if ever, love opening your eyes, The great blind windows lifted toward the sun, the doors Thrown open wide.  I said to my heart, Do I wake or sleep?—Soon, soon, these closings start Where mornings held the garden captive; and early dusk, Laden with mist and smoke, drift upward from the grass. The wind dies. The scraping leaves are still. I said to my heart, Ravaged by darkness, “Now, Soon, and Later have become Each other—doors all closed, the windows blocked and barred for good— All and sink down together to the bottom of the sea. Do I wake or sleep? It is late tonight as it will ever be.”

The girl in the green ski chasuble hasn’t yet graduated from radio school. Let’s pay attention. Looking ahead, why, he waved his mouth along. Doesn’t life get difficult in the summer? The divine medicine for it collapsed in front of the shortstop, who took off like a battalion. Crowds of older people who would read this happily, willingly, then walking into night’s embrace, then kiss.“To turn you out, to turn you out!” Sometimes an arm is accused: You could have felt it, the blue shirts, phlegm central, four times a night. But what does that get me? Light refreshments. When the suburban demonstration kind of shrunk you put your foot out, leave it or kiss it or even two years ago, Charmaine here tells us. I think I should stay ... Cross-eyed sonofabitch ... He liked him, he could tell. A de-happening. The gangster no longer wanted to sleep with him, but what the heck. With time off for actual fuzz collected ... All right, boys. Cheap murders, peach driven ... I seen enough of those samples along the way.