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This morning a cat—bright orange—pawing at the one patch of new grass in the sand-and tanbark-colored leaves. And last night the sapphire of the raccoon's eyes in the beam of the flashlight. He was climbing a tree beside the house, trying to get onto the porch, I think, for a wad of oatmeal Simmered in cider from the bottom of the pan we'd left out for the birds. And earlier a burnished, somewhat dazed woodchuck, his coat gleaming with spring, Loping toward his burrow in the roots of a tree among the drying winter's litter Of old leaves on the floor of the woods, when I went out to get the New York Times. And male cardinals whistling back and forth—sireeep, sreeep, sreeep— Sets of three sweet full notes, weaving into and out of each other like the triplet rhymes in medieval poetry, And the higher, purer notes of the tufted titmice among them, High in the trees where they were catching what they could of the early sun. And a doe and two yearlings, picking their way along the worrying path they'd made through the gully, their coats the color of the forest floor, Stopped just at the roots of the great chestnut where the woodchuck's burrow was, Froze, and the doe looked back over her shoulder at me for a long moment, and leapt forward, Her young following, and bounded with that almost mincing precision in the landing of each hoof Up the gully, over it, and out of sight. So that I remembered Dreaming last night that a deer walked into the house while I was writing at the kitchen table, Came in the glass door from the garden, looked at me with a stilled defiant terror, like a thing with no choices, And, neck bobbing in that fragile-seeming, almost mechanical mix of arrest and liquid motion, came to the table And snatched a slice of apple, and stood, and then quietened, and to my surprise did not leave again. And those little captains, the chickadees, swift to the feeder and swift away. And the squirrels with their smoke-plume tails trailing digging in the leaves to bury or find buried— I'm told they don't remember where they put things, that it's an activity of incessant discovery— Nuts, tree-fall proteins, whatever they forage from around the house of our leavings, And the flameheaded woodpecker at the suet with his black-and-white ladderback elegant fierceness— They take sunflower seeds and stash them in the rough ridges of the tree's bark Where the beaks of the smoke-and-steel blue nuthatches can't quite get at them— Though the nuthatches sometimes seem to get them as they con the trees methodically for spiders' eggs or some other overwintering insect's intricately packaged lump of futurity Got from its body before the cold came on. And the little bat in the kitchen lightwell— When I climbed on a chair to remove the sheet of wimpled plastic and let it loose, It flew straight into my face and I toppled to the floor, chair under me, And it flared down the hall and did what seemed a frantic reconnoiter of the windowed, high-walled living room. And lit on a brass firelog where it looked like a brown and ash grey teenaged suede glove with Mephistophelean dreams, And then, spurt of black sperm, up, out the window, and into the twilight woods. All this life going on about my life, or living a life about all this life going on, Being a creature, whatever my drama of the moment, at the edge of the raccoon's world— He froze in my flashlight beam and looked down, no affect, just looked, The ringtail curled and flared to make him look bigger and not to be messed with— I was thinking he couldn't know how charming his comic-book robber's mask was to me, That his experience of his being and mine of his and his of mine were things entirely apart, Though there were between us, probably, energies of shrewd and respectful tact, based on curiosity and fear— I knew about his talons whatever he knew about me— And as for my experience of myself, it comes and goes, I'm not sure it's any one thing, as my experience of these creatures is not, And I know I am often too far from it or too near, glad to be rid of it which is why it was such a happiness, The bright orange of the cat, and the first pool of green grass-leaves in early April, and the birdsong—that orange and that green not colors you'd set next to one another in the human scheme. And the crows' calls, even before you open your eyes, at sunup.

When working on a small scale He is practicing a gesture. So much of life is practicing gestures. So much of living is evaluating Those around you for signs of damage. Now it is night, morning’s a blink away. Sleep is sometimes thought of As an avalanche of repair gnomes That attends your pit stop. Would that we were sleeping now! Viable alternatives will be reviled Until the point of no return is passed. The only reasonable course of action Is to look for sizeable flotsam, Redo the resume, learn a martial art.

What appear to be peach-white, over-washed pajamas in the washed-out newspaper photo on one side droop like a monk’s hood, the upper half of that leg raised with the other, whole one and the hands they’re there! and the less washed-out pink balloon above them that they reach for or have just let go —the latter probably as one hand, palm up, is wide of it, two-thirds of a laughing mouth visible, the wheelchair in this case, its sparkle stark against the flannel and plied living limbs within it, a tool of fun. Such wisdom’s possible here only, the ability to feel glad to be alive gone on the outside, the “cloistered incarceration” of the ward holding the boys as if they were a group of monks. Asked by a visitor what it’s like to live secluded most of the time, mute and with forced labor, a chronic lack of sleep for all the praying, the Benedictine monk asked back: “Have you ever been in love?”

1. In the first year of war they played “bride and groom” and counted everything on their fingers: their faces reflected in the river; the waves that swept away their faces before disappearing; and the names of newborns. Then the war grew up and invented a new game for them: the winner is the one who returns from the journey alone, full of stories of the dead as the passing wings flutter over the broken trees; and now the winner must tow the hills of dust so lightly that no one feels it; and now the winner wears a necklace with half a metal heart for a pendant, and the task to follow is to forget the other half. The war grew old and left the old letters, the calendars and newspapers, to turn yellow with the news, with the numbers, and with the names of the players. 2. Five centuries have passed since Scheherazade told her tale. Baghdad fell, and they forced me to the underworld. I watch the shadows as they pass behind the wall: none look like Tammuz. He would cross thousands of miles for the sake of a single cup of tea poured by my own hand. I fear the tea is growing cold: cold tea is worse than death. 3. I would not have found this cracked jar if it weren’t for my loneliness, which sees gold in all that glitters. Inside the jar is the magic plant that Gilgamesh never stopped looking for. I’ll show it to Tammuz when he comes, and we’ll journey, as fast as light, to all the continents of the world, and all who smell it will be cured or freed, or will know its secret. I don’t want Tammuz to come too late to hear my urgent song. 4. When Tammuz comes I’ll also give him all the lists I made to pass the time: lists of food, of books, lost friends, favorite songs, list of cities to see before one dies, and lists of ordinary things with notes to prove that we are still alive. 5. It’s as if I’m hearing music in the boat’s hull, as if I can smell the river, the lily, the fish, as if I’m touching the skies that fall from the words “I love you, ” as if I can see those tiny notes that are read over and over again, as if I’m living the lives of birds who bear nothing but their feathers. 6. The earth circled the sun once more and not a cloud nor wind nor country passed through my eyes. My shadow, imprisoned in Aladdin’s lamp, mirrors the following: a picture of the world with you inside, light passing through a needle’s eye, scrawlings akin to cuneiform, hidden paths to the sun, dried clay, tranquil Ottoman pottery, and a huge pomegranate, its seeds scattered all over Uruk. 7. In Iraq, after a thousand and one nights, someone will talk to someone else. Markets will open for regular customers. Small feet will tickle the giant feet of the Tigris. Gulls will spread their wings and no one will fire at them. Women will walk the streets without looking back in fear. Men will give their real names without putting their lives at risk. Children will go to school and come home again. Chickens in the villages won't peck at human flesh on the grass. Disputes will take place without any explosives. A cloud will pass over cars heading to work as usual. A hand will wave to someone leaving or returning. The sunrise will be the same for those who wake and those never will. And every moment something ordinary will happen under the sun.

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

That morning under a pale hood of sky I heard the unambiguous scrape of spackling against the side of our wickered, penitential house. The day mirled and clabbered in the thick, stony light, and the rooks’ feathered narling astounded the salt waves, the plush coast. I lugged a bucket past the forked coercion of a tree, up toward the pious and nictitating preeminence of a school, hunkered there in its gully of learning. Only later, by the galvanized washstand, while gaunt, phosphorescent heifers swam beyond the windows, did the whorled and sparky gib of the indefinite wobble me into knowledge. Then, I heard the ghost-clink of milk bottle on the rough threshold and understood the meadow-bells that trembled over a nimbus of ragwort— the whole afternoon lambent, corrugated, puddle-mad.

And although I am a poet, I am not the bullet; I will not heat-search the soft points. I am not the coroner who will graze her hand over naked knees. Who will swish her fingers in the mouth. Who will flip the body over, her eye a hook fishing for government-issued lead. I am not the sidewalk, which is unsurprised as another cheek scrapes harsh against it. Although I too enjoy soft palms on me; enjoy when he rests on my body with a hard breath; I have clasped this man inside me and released him again and again, listening to him die thousands of little deaths. What is a good metaphor for a woman who loves in a time like this? I am no scalpel or high thread count sheet. Not a gavel, or hand-painted teacup. I am neither           nor romanced by the streetlamp nor candlelight; my hands are not an iron, but look, they’re hot, look how I place them           in love           on his skin and am still able to unwrinkle his spine.

Why are the things that have no death The ones with neither sight nor breath! Eternity is thrust upon A bit of earth, a senseless stone. A grain of dust, a casual clod Receives the greatest gift of God. A pebble in the roadway lies— It never dies. The grass our fathers cut away Is growing on their graves today; The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow Eternally will come and go. There is no kind of death to kill The sands that lie so meek and still. . . . But Man is great and strong and wise— And so he dies.

1.  Is all at least partially as you might wish? 2. Was the flat even slightly in shape to be sent off? And O what gravity sits upon me here Indeed I am a fellow with something of the world upon my
 shoulders. I turn and say to you “Now I work. I earn to learn!” Masters of thought Gutkind The Arts Ozenfant Anthropology and Culture Stern World Literature Lenrow Conflicting World Capitals Kohn I am in a library for this week and then tickets to be taken. And so I might tell you more of this Like a crow with wings that will not come down A cock o’ the walk fluffing a pretty feather. There is a thing I can’t shake from my mind though. That Limbo you must have automatically slipped me to. I remember mentioning the fact of  it to a child In my convent days She neatly placed me with a slight half shiver In that gray-green unborn world I could taste the color — finger the dullfelt mute of a place. You said, “And indeed that explains it!” I, perhaps, see strings of nuns Like black pearls drawn slowly t’ards the step And well there may be a star at the top And there are the doleful moods of my mock-goblin godliness.

Is it possible That so high debate, So sharp, so sore, and of such rate, Should end so soon and was begun so late? Is it possible? Is it possible So cruel intent, So hasty heat and so soon spent, From love to hate, and thence for to relent? Is it possible? Is it possible That any may find Within one heart so diverse mind, To change or turn as weather and wind? Is it possible? Is it possible To spy it in an eye That turns as oft as chance on die, The truth whereof can any try? Is it possible? It is possible For to turn so oft, To bring that lowest which was most aloft, And to fall highest yet to light soft: It is possible. All is possible Whoso list believe. Trust therefore first, and after preve, As men wed ladies by licence and leave. All is possible.