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Here in Italy the buildings are the color Of dead skin and the sky is “tragic” And the rivers are brown and turbulent And everybody is always stopping by To say “Ciao!” and then “Ciao!” We think a lot about emotion, chiefly The emotion of love. There is much to cry about. And after, sleep. One falls in love So as not to fall asleep. I have just awakened To the fact that I am not in love And am about to fall asleep or write an opera In which someone falls asleep and dies Or write a letter to a friend or call somebody up To meet me later for a drink. Maybe it’s too late. Tomorrow I will go out and buy something to make me happy. I remember standing in the train station in Pisa Hoping to catch the sound of an American voice In the crowd. It’s good to remember such things When you think you haven’t “lived” enough Because you need to learn not to regret What you’ve never done. Fortunately, I remember Everything that's ever happened to me. I remember asking a woman I didn't know Whether or not she was the person I was looking for And she said, “Yes, much to my regret.” That wasn’t difficult to remember Because it just happened a few minutes ago. Other things are harder. I don’t remember Right away what I had for breakfast two weeks ago Last Thursday or the specific date of my first Masturbation, though I’m sure that with some effort I could recover the lasting details. I remember My father using a green hair tonic called “H-A,” Which stood for “Hair Arranger.” I remember the night My father tore out a big clump of my mother's hair In an argument. They were drunk and I came out Of my room in my pajamas and asked them to stop. If I said I wanted to fall apart in someone’s arms You would have to assume I was being sarcastic And you would be right. No one has arms in which I care to fall apart, at least not at the moment. Tomorrow night I am going to see a play about “A contemporary man in the process of falling apart.” I think everyone falls apart about twenty times a day. I’m still confused about why I mentioned Italy At the beginning of this poem, especially since It’s all a terrible lie. My students would say It means “the poet does not know where he is; Some catastrophe has distorted his perceptions.” I am drowsy but happy and resemble the corner Of a big empty room. I am drunk and staring Into the bathtub. A lot of people are standing Around listening to music. My fingers Smell like cigarettes. I am wondering If there is any way to describe the pleasure Someone derives from seeing a man’s cock Shoved up someone’s ass, or how one Can go on like this, even after having given up Completely to nervousness, and to death. I remember the one night I spent on a ship. The porters woke us at dawn. We stood At the railing to sight the blue and transparent island Gaping through mist in the distance. For breakfast, We ate peaches. I hated the people I was with, But I must have been incredibly stupid. We spent the day On the island, seesawed in the park, and waded in the sea.

Hard to reach, so you yank your clothes getting at it—the button at your neck, the knotted shoe. You snake your fingers in until your nails possess the patch of skin that’s eating you. And now you’re in the throes of ecstasy, eyes lolling in your skull, as if sensing the first time the joy one takes in being purely animal. It’s so good to have a scratch, though isn’t it a drag living like this, jounced on a high wire of impulses, every wish the same programmed response to another signal passed from cell to cell, amounting in the end to a distraction— if truth be told—from rarer things, thoughts free from the anchor-chain of self? For even the least sweetness, we behave like the old man on the low wall I saw outside the hospital today, who had his hand inside his flannel shirt, scratching at his chest, trancelike, agog, his eyelids fluttering like butterflies in a meadow of snowy Queen Anne’s lace. I never saw him stop. Such root satisfaction is like the dying desert legionnaire’s in films, when he finds, against all odds, a water jug and, lifting it, delights to feel it heavy. The score swells, his eyes relume. He tugs the stopper out, then fills his mouth with sand. Though, worse: we’ve seen the film; we know it’s sand; we gulp it anyway.

As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind— as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

I don’t mind the ring roads or the strange intersections, filled in with radio music    tarmac skirting streetlight and         the dissolving      moon. Wing mirrors tell of running trees. My heart races in the heave of the wind. In the pivot of glass everything is so small and manageable. I think of an old song, of purple cows in far fields, I wonder what it’d take to cover miles and miles with no maps or destination. It is not easy anymore to forget or be free of the bear that roams the place where I come from.

The farmhouses north of Driggs, silos for miles along the road saying BUTLER or SIOUX. The light saying rain coming on, the wind not up yet, animals waiting as the front hits everything on the high fiats, hailstones bouncing like rabbits under the sage. Nothing running off. Creeks clear. The river itself a shallow, straight shoot to the north, its rocks mossy, slick above the few deep pockets. On another drainage, the O-T-O. Loose stands of aspen on the slopes. Dude cabins, their porches and split-log loveseats, dull yellow curtains slapping over the open sills. From Emigrant north to the Great Bend, loaves of haystacks, stud farms, charolais, steel flumes between the ditches. Access to the river’s acreage closed to its whole length, the county roads dusty, turning onto the high shelves of side valleys. Scattered shacks and corrals. An old homestead, the sod roof rotting out its timbers. Below the spurs from the higher range, basins in the mountain pastures fill with odd water. The henbane dries. Ruts cross in the grass at a schoolhouse. Each runnel mixing where it can the spring creeks deepen and go on easily, swelling to the larger tributary with its pools and banks. At any bend the willows bend too, and gravel bars on the other shore flare into the shallows. An encampment. Ponies wade to their knees and drink, raising up now and then to look out through the smoke to the near hills, the one plateau heading off beyond the Crazies and the Little Belts, north. It strikes the river at the Gates, the water piling through its broad course, level, ridges and the vertical faces of bluffs crowding to each side. This rock is of an excellent grit for whetstones, hard and sharp. There is here more timber than below the falls. A spring immensely clear and of a bluish cast boils up near its center with such force that its surface in that part is strangely higher than the surrounding earth. I heard today a noise resembling the discharge of a piece of ordnance. Unless it be the bursting of the rich mines of silver in these mountains, I am at a loss to account for it. As the passages about the falls are narrow and steep, and as the buffalo travel to the river in great herds, the hinder part presses those in front out of their depth to the strong current. Their carcasses by the hundreds litter the shore below the cataracts. We have made of the mast of the pirogue two axletrees. Walked ahead to my first view of the falls, hearing them from afar. Their spray is scarcely formed when bodies of the same beaten water thrust over and down, concealing every shape, their whiteness alone visible. We will leave at this place all heavy baggage, the red pirogue, and whatever provisions we can do without. Needing a cellar for the caching of our stores we set hands to digging. More white bear. These fellows leave a formidable impression in the mud or sand. Goodrich, who is remarkably fond of fishing, caught many trout of two different species. Came to in a handsome timbered bottom across from the entrance of a very considerable river. Its character is so precisely that of the one below that the party with few exceptions has pronounced it the Missouri. The fork to the south is perfectly transparent, runs rapidly with an even, unriffled surface. Its bed is composed of round, smooth stones like those of rivers issuing from a mountainous country. If this latter be the one we are to take we should encounter within 50 miles a series of precipitous falls. There is now no timber on the hills. The black rock has given place to a yellow and brown or black clay, brown and yellowish white sandstone and a hard, dark freestone. It rises from the water abruptly on both sides in varied walls. I could discover above their horizon only the most elevated points. The river retains both its whitish color and a proportion of its sediment, but it is much clearer than below. The banks afforded us good towing. This method of ascending the river is the safest and most expeditious. We pass a great number of dry streambeds. These plains being level and wholly destitute of timber, the wind blows violently with its loads of sand. Driftwood comes down as the water rises. The banks are falling in very fast and I wonder that our pirogues are not swallowed by them. Wild hyssop grows here. A few cottonwood along the verges. Undergrowths of rose and serviceberry, and small-leafed willow on the sandbars. Met this evening the famous white bear. I had rather deal with several indians than with this gentleman. Much less ice running in the river. We make ready to set out, the party in general good health except for a few venereal complaints. A windy, blustering day. Our two pirogues still frozen. I draw a connection of the country from the information of traders. The falls are about 800 miles west. Rose early and commenced roofing the two wings of huts. Our situation sandy. Cottonwood and elm, some small ash. We must now settle for the winter. Very cold. Hard frosts. The river falling. For several days we pass deserted Mandan villages along both banks. The beaver and otter are becoming more abundant. We put ashore at noon, setting fire to the prairies to signal that we wish council with the natives. These Arikara much reduced by pox. It is customary for their nation to show its grief by pain, some cutting off two smaller fingers at the second joint. The earth of the plains is in many places opened in long crevices, its soil indifferent and with a kind of timothy branching like flax from its main stalk. Delayed here today so as to take equal altitudes, the weights of the waters of the two rivers, their specific gravities. As we near the great Platte, the sandbars are more numerous, sawyers worse than they were below. Mulberry, oak and walnut. These prairies from the river have very much the appearance of farms. We continue to pole our way upstream. Nothwithstanding our precautions, we struck a bar and were near turning over. The sergeants are directed each to keep a journal of all passing occurrences and such other descriptions of the country as shall seem to them worthy of notice. Our hunters report deer in every copse. I got out and walked for one mile through a rush bottom, nettles as high as my breast. All the forepart of the day we were arranging our company and taking on those articles we will need. St. Charles. The men spent their last night agreeably, dancing with the French ladies, &c. My ride was on a road finely shaded, with now and then a good farm. The corn in tassel, its leaves of a deep rich green bending at the ends by their own weight. Wheat and oat stubble. A hilly country. I passed a toll-gate, and, looking back, had my last view of the town’s steeples. From the state house cupola I could count the buildings, the number of which was ninety. A wooden bridge crosses the river just below the town. Men were engaged in racing their horses. I sought lodging and was shown to bed in a large barrack where a man and wife conversed with me until I feigned sleep. This is a post town, the mails arriving from both east and west on Wednesdays and Saturdays. A young woman gave me directions from an upstairs window. I descended the hill into Frankfort. There has lately been established a large manufactory for spinning hemp and flax. It is wrought by water and keeps in motion 1200 spindles. The streets of Lexington cross at right angles, its stores filled both with imports and with local goods: fine cutlery, tin ware, muslins and nankeens. I was so well put up that a man would be fastidious to a fault to have found the least thing wanting. Approaching the city the land changed steadily for the better, no longer broken, as to the eastward, but fine extensive levels and slopes, the road very wide, with grazing parks, meadows, and every spot cultivated. The farms hereabout have generally good and spacious stone barns, a few acres cleared but for those stumps or girdled trees still standing. The neighbors found last year a human jawbone, rough and honeycombed. My wagoner arrived this afternoon and went on, appointing to be in Louisville before me. I pass a house with small turrets at its corners, lawns, the whole needing only vineyards for the look of villas in Provence and Languedoc. Noticed along the banks of the Holston phlox with white flowers and phlox with pink flowers, two different species, very small phlox with lance-shaped leaves. Where I come in from Abingdon, the Kentucky road divides, the other fork for Burke courthouse. With nothing to do I make ink from gall nuts. More opossum taken in the woods. This animal’s greatest peculiarity is the false belly of the female. She can draw the slit so close that one must look narrowly to find it if she be virgin. The air clearing this morning, I was surprised with a full prospect of mountains. This river where we leave off is 240 miles distant in a straight line from Currituck Inlet. The turkey-cocks begin to gobble, which is the language wherein they make love. We have a dreamer of dreams among us who warned me in the morning to take care that I not fall into the creek. I thanked him and used what caution I could, but my horse made a false leap and laid me down in the water at my full length. The sky at sunset had a swept look. There was risk of our dining with St. Anthony when one indian knocked down a fat bear. Of the stem of the silk-grass their women make small aprons which they wear for decency. They put these on with so much art that their most negligent postures reveal nothing to our curiosity. The ruffles of some of our fellows were a little discolored by the bloodroot which these ladies use to improve their charms. Bear, it would seem, is no diet for saints, for it is apt to make them too rampant. At night, the surveyors took advantage of a clear sky. This trial of our variance shows it still something less then 3 degrees, so it remains much as we had found it at the sea. We have now run the poles beyond those inhabitants most inland. There fell a sort of Scots mist all the way. I have learned how rattlesnakes take a squirrel. They ogle the poor beast till by force of charm it falls down stupefied and senseless. The snake approaches it and moistens first one ear and then the other with his spittle, making the head all slippery. When that is done he draws this member into his mouth, and after it, by casual degrees, all the rest of the body. I am not so rigid an observer of the Sabbath as to allow of no journeys to be taken upon it. Nor would I care, like a certain New England magistrate, to order a man to the whipping post for daring to ride for a midwife on the Lord’s Day. And yet we found plainly that travelling on the Sunday had not thriven with us in the least. The rain was enlivened with loud thunder, and there is something in the woods that makes this sound more awful, the violence of the lightning more visible as the trees are shivered quite to the root. This Great Dismal Swamp is the source of five several rivers. We run our line to its skirts, which begin with dwarf reeds, moist uneven ground. The season inclining us to aguish distempers, we were suffered by the resident to cut up wood for firing, drive away the damps. At the bottom of the account Mankind are great losers by the luxuries of feather beds and warm apartments. We perceive our appetites to mend, and though we have to drink only what Adam had in Paradise, that stream of life runs cool and peaceably in our veins. The days are hard. Our slumbers sweeten, and if ever we dream of women they are kind. I delight to see the banks of the Inlet adorned with myrtle, yet it must be owned that, sacred to Venus though it be, this plant grows commonly in very dirty soil. Norfolk has most the air of a town of any in Virginia. There are now riding at her wharves near 20 brigantines. The trade hither is engrossed by those saints of New England who every week carry off a pretty deal of tobacco. I have found that after my devotions a walk in the garden can do much to fill my heart with clear obedience. I repair me there that I might think deeply of the earth and how it will be all too soon my sleeping-place. For I am told to fear such things as bring me to ill terms, told of those who seek congress with the earth that they shall have her in their time forever. That her places sing their love-songs for no man. That I am not the suitor whose betrothed awaits him, but some unwelcome third with God alone her lover. And yet I would look upon such country as will show me nature undressed, the strata of the land, her lays and beds and all her privacies. For my wonder tells me I should be promiscuous, should learn by all the laws of bodies and by where they are the joyful news out of the new found world. This walk is news. Its bodies point me always in and out along some newer course. There have been divers days together wherein alone I’ve watched these flowers buoyed on their stems and holding up the sun. Just now I catch them thinking on themselves, composing from their dark places the least passages for light, tendering how they look and how I look on them. It comes to me that the world is to the end of it thinking on itself and how its parts gather with one another for their time. These are the light, and all the forms they show are lords of inns wherein the soul takes rest. If I could find it in myself to hide the world within the world then there would be no place to which I could remove it, save that brightness wherein all things come to see.

for E. A. Vulnerable therein & perfectly relinquished by stasis, object always of my natal, crepuscular desire, into the translucent specter, body’s blue fossil of ice, never autochthonous, still embarked upon the imperative passage to get there, to secure a geography that will beg description, narrative map, adopted tentatively; if only to write the ritual book of what was possible, but never bound to occur.

yu cant catch me n i cant catch yu we wer cumming together nd th allman brothrs wer playing on yr stereo us on th pillows yr eye cumming into me opn hed no bugs at ths altitude yu sd bfor n say it agen thr is nothing to make up inside ths tent or awning ovr th colors nd my gaze along yr skin yr two eyez bcumming whun eye in yr forhed or a third eye appeering my cum in yu yr cum in me

Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed? O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow, Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south, The soft south whither thine heart is set? Shall not the grief of the old time follow? Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth? Hast thou forgotten ere I forget? Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow, Thy way is long to the sun and the south; But I, fulfilled of my heart's desire, Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow, From tawny body and sweet small mouth Feed the heart of the night with fire. I the nightingale all spring through, O swallow, sister, O changing swallow, All spring through till the spring be done, Clothed with the light of the night on the dew, Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow, Take flight and follow and find the sun. Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow, Though all things feast in the spring's guest-chamber, How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet? For where thou fliest I shall not follow, Till life forget and death remember, Till thou remember and I forget. Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow, I know not how thou hast heart to sing. Hast thou the heart? is it all past over? Thy lord the summer is good to follow, And fair the feet of thy lover the spring: But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover? O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow, My heart in me is a molten ember And over my head the waves have met. But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow, Could I forget or thou remember, Couldst thou remember and I forget. O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow, The heart's division divideth us. Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree; But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow To the place of the slaying of Itylus, The feast of Daulis, the Thracian Sea. O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow, I pray thee sing not a little space. Are not the roofs and the lintels wet? The woven web that was plain to follow, The small slain body, the flowerlike face, Can I remember if thou forget? O sister, sister, thy first-begotten! The hands that cling and the feet that follow, The voice of the child's blood crying yet Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten? Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow, But the world shall end when I forget.

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green, That creepeth o’er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed, To pleasure his dainty whim: And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, And a staunch old heart has he. How closely he twineth, how tight he clings, To his friend the huge Oak Tree! And slily he traileth along the ground, And his leaves he gently waves, As he joyously hugs and crawleth round The rich mould of dead men’s graves. Creeping where grim death has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Whole ages have fled and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old Ivy shall never fade, From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant, in its lonely days, Shall fatten upon the past: For the stateliest building man can raise, Is the Ivy’s food at last. Creeping on, where time has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

I have come to realize the body is its own pyre, that degree rises from within, the fatty acids a kind of kindling. Like a scientist in a lab, this much I have established, blood jelled like gasoline, the years spread before me like a map pinned with targets, where I’m raging even now. It works both ways. Clear the forests to see your enemies and your enemies see you clearly. Like all effective incendiaries, I won’t only bloom where I’m planted.