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I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.

I am downstairs early looking for something to do when I find my father on his knees at the fireplace in the sitting-room sweeping ash from around and beneath the grate with the soft brown hand-brush he keeps especially for this. Has he been here all night waiting to catch me out? So far as I can tell I have done nothing wrong. I think so again when he calls my name without turning round; he must have seen me with the eyes in the back of his head. ‘What’s the matter old boy? Couldn’t sleep?’ His voice is kinder than I expect, as though he knows we have in common a sadness I do not feel yet. I skate towards him in my grey socks over the polished boards of the sitting-room, negotiating the rugs with their patterns of almost-dragons. He still does not turn round. He is concentrating now on arranging a stack of kindling on crumpled newspaper in the fire basket, pressing small lumps of coal carefully between the sticks as though he is decorating a cake. Then he spurts a match, and chucks it on any old how, before spreading a fresh sheet of newspaper over the whole mouth of the fireplace to make the flames take hold. Why this fresh sheet does not also catch alight I cannot think. The flames are very close. I can see them and hear them raging through yesterday’s cartoon of President Kennedy and President Khrushchev racing towards each other in their motorcars both shouting I’m sure he’s going to stop first! But there’s no need to worry. Everything is just as my father wants it to be, and in due time, when the fire is burning nicely, he whisks the newspaper clear, folds it under his arm, and picks up the dustpan with the debris of the night before. Has he just spoken to me again? I do not think so. I do not know. I was thinking how neat he is. I was asking myself: will I be like this? How will I manage? After that he chooses a log from the wicker wood-basket to balance on the coals, and admires his handiwork. When the time comes to follow him, glide, glide over the polished floor, he leads the way to the dustbins. A breath of ash pours continuously over his shoulder from the pan he carries before him like a man bearing a gift in a picture of a man bearing a gift.

I don’t say things I don’t want to say or chew the fat with fat cats just because. With favor-givers who want favors back, I tend to pass on going for the ask. I send, instead, a series of regrets, slip the winding snares that people lay. The unruffledness I feel as a result, the lank repose, the psychic field of rye swayed in wavy air, is my respite among the shivaree of clanging egos on the packed commuter train again tonight. Sapping and demeaning—it takes a lot to get from bed to work and back to bed. I barely go an hour before I’m caught wincing at the way that woman laughs or he keeps clucking at his magazine. And my annoyance fills me with annoyance. It’s laziness that lets them seem unreal —a radio with in-and-out reception blaring like hell when it finally hits a station. The song that’s on is not the one I’d hoped for, so I wait distractedly for what comes next.

The famous Polish poet calls Simone de Beauvoir a Nazi hag but to me she will always be her famous book, the one with the Matisse paper cut on the cover, a sad blue nude I took into the woods. Where we college girls went to coax the big picture from her, as if she could tell us how to use all the strange blades on our Swiss Army knives— the firewood we arranged in either log cabin or tepee, a little house built to be burned down. Which could be a metaphor: Simone as the wind puffing the damp flames, a cloud with a mouth that became obsolete once we started using gasoline. Still, she gave me one lesson that sticks, which is: do not take a paperback camping in the rain or it may swell to many times its original size, and if you start with a big book you’ll end up with a cinderblock. In that vein I pictured Simone as huge until (much later) I read that her size was near-midget— imagine, if we took Gertrude Stein, we’d be there still, trying to build some kind of travois to drag her body out. The other thing I remember, a word,immanence— meaning, you get stuck with the cooking and laundry while the man gets to hit on all your friends in Paris. Sure you can put the wet book in the oven and try baking it like a cake. But the seam will stay soggy even when the pages rise, ruffled like French pastry. As far as laundry goes, it’s best I steer clear, what with my tendency to forget the tissues wadded in my sleeves. What happens is I think I’m being so careful, and everything still comes out like the clearing where we woke. Covered in flakes that were then the real thing: snow. Which sounds more la-di-da in French. But then the sun came up and all la neige vanished like those chapters we grew bored with and had skipped.

Women’s tears are but water; The tears of men are blood. He sits alone in the firelight And on either side drifts by Sleep, like a torrent whirling, Profound, wrinkled and dumb. Circuitously, stealthily, Dawn occupies the city; As if the seasons knew of his grief Spring has suddenly changed into snow Disaster and sorrow Have made him their pet; He cannot escape their accursed embraces. For all his dodgings Memory will lacerate him. What good does it do to wander Nights hours through city streets? Only that in poor places He can be with common men And receive their unspoken Instinctive sympathy. What has life done for him? He stands alone in the darkness Like a sentry never relieved, Looking over a barren space, Awaiting the tardy finish.

The faster I travel the slower the world dies Inside the head of a flower The sun’s a swinging pendulum —all Radiance is progress Of a pre-existent stillness Stone, inspired To fluency curves thought toward the drinking of Its shadow grail: grille: grid The lines recursive to impalement one point alone sings cumulative, crowding negativity My apparitions distorted by star-tides Fail to approximate zero Where sensation’s tip Crumbles to ash Another Radio-profile turns, edged with dark cries objects unfounded of medieval prophecy The heavens too grow cold

There's no cause for vanity and none for pride: it's just a matter of assembling words in lines, then dividing them up (or letting them divide themselves), hoping they sound good or bad. (What's important is that they sound like something.) It's all a question of staying alert so that red doesn't bleed into orange or orange into yellow or yellow into silence. There's no cause for rejecting silence and none for accepting it, either. We should speak when there's noth- ing to say and be quiet when others talk. That's the poet's business, so get used to it. There's nothing glorious about it. The future doesn't count for anything and the past just laughs at us. There's no cause for writing this poem and none for deleting it, either.

Doesn’t that shining line Of ocean, broken Suggest a ship at sea, Or something? Ah, if to be “At sea” is to be lost, Left out, or just un- Certain of the meaning, Someone else chimes in. Nevermind, I’m sure it’s Nothing, someone else insists Of this impossible vessel — Crafted of affect and lack Of glasses, the sail a conceit Of low clouds, the bow A row of breakers, sun Glinting off the port- Hole (imagined) of the cabin Below whose bed is also, As we say, the sea- Bed or floor(as if it were A dwelling down there, Where the restless sleepers Are scattered bone). A ship At sea is only a figure Of speech somebody else Claims: a quick shape — Suggested by the passage Of a cloud and the tug Of  the current; a thin dream Already almost forgotten ... If you can forget the cargo, Another adds, which was Human: though that fact Was somehow less visible To the traders than the trade Routes traced out across The dissolving paper Map, under a spill of silver Coins poured out. Life Is brief, one might sigh At this point: a matter Of water in water Moving, each of us Carefully bearing The bags we packed With cherished flotsam And jetsam, clutching A one-way ticket Printed on a spume Of wind-blown white ... A pretty image, used To excuse too much: As if the lives enslaved Were worthless as this Sudden welling up Of what is mostly self- Pity (salt at my lips, You say, my vision Swimming). Nothing. It’s nothing but ... It’s nothing. To be At sea is also to be, As we say, astray or In the dark, hoping For terra firma, and To be enlightened, Soon, as to just what Was meant by that sad Laugh and last remark.

The lady is a tramp a camp a lamp The lady is a sight a might a light the lady devastated an alley or two reverberated through the valley which leads to me, and you the lady is the apple of God's eye: He's cool enough about it but He tends to strut a little when she passes by the lady is a wonder daughter of the thunder smashing cages legislating rages with the voice of ages singing us through.

It is a tragedy, yes, but a confusing one. What happened to the wrestlers and where have they gone? Loulou the Pomeranian would love to know. Outdoors the hills are buried in snow, but inside a rose, a rose full-blown, a roomful of rose. The bloom and its shadow overtaking the space. The bloom proposing an impossible tomb. Of the Tachists, the master said to his friend Harry, “They paint white on white, and they believe that this is an achievement.” Harry said, 
“I dare you to paint a white rose in a white room with a window looking onto a landscape covered with snow.” Now this — which even Loulou, color-blindish, can tell is red — is the master’s grandiose response to an intoxicating challenge. Synesthetically, the rose fills Loulou’s pom ears with the echoes of torch songs, longing for the wrong. Loulou is practically drunk from the smell: a heady pink, and juicy, and almost obscene. Like crushed up candies, lingering and sweet, but with an adult musk at the core: a powerful flower. In looking, Loulou’s heart becomes a house at dusk about to force 
something to happen.