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I have hidden your lost teeth in the net of all my famous hair And with foresight promised your umbilicus To several minor gods. I paid your fee in fawn skin & the lightest fringe of tissue, all the quiet noons assembled, In yard stars & the light of phosphorescent pens, The dioramas that it takes to fill lacunae, in ancestral knots That tell the story of our humble people: watchmakers, Mainly, ventriloquists & scholars of quintessence, Amateur lifeguards I meant to surpass. How I loved My green & distant futures! But I love you more From late Holocene out to the farthest buoy, unto Blackmail & a verb that means renouncing Christ Or else describes the path of sap before it’s amber, Before it dimples, just a little, to collect —

‘The myrtle bush grew shady Down by the ford.’ ‘Is it even so?’ said my lady. ‘Even so!’ said my lord. ‘The leaves are set too thick together For the point of a sword. ‘The arras in your room hangs close, No light between! You wedded one of those that see unseen.’ ‘Is it even so?’ said the King’s Majesty. ‘Even so!’ said the Queen.

When I see you, who were so wise and cool, Gazing with silly sickness on that fool You’ve given your love to, your adoring hands Touch his so intimately that each understands, I know, most hidden things; and when I know Your holiest dreams yield to the stupid bow Of his red lips, and that the empty grace Of those strong legs and arms, that rosy face, Has beaten your heart to such a flame of love, That you have given him every touch and move, Wrinkle and secret of you, all your life, —Oh! then I know I’m waiting, lover-wife, For the great time when love is at a close, And all its fruit’s to watch the thickening nose And sweaty neck and dulling face and eye, That are yours, and you, most surely, till you die! Day after day you’ll sit with him and note The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat; As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat, And love, love, love to habit! And after that, When all that’s fine in man is at an end, And you, that loved young life and clean, must tend A foul sick fumbling dribbling body and old, When his rare lips hang flabby and can’t hold Slobber, and you’re enduring that worst thing, Senility’s queasy furtive love-making, And searching those dear eyes for human meaning, Propping the bald and helpless head, and cleaning A scrap that life’s flung by, and love’s forgotten,— Then you’ll be tired; and passion dead and rotten; And he’ll be dirty, dirty! O lithe and free And lightfoot, that the poor heart cries to see, That’s how I’ll see your man and you!— But you —Oh, when that time comes, you’ll be dirty too!

it begins with your face of a stone where lips repose like two seals in a coastal mist of cigarette smoke you move through the streets— listing them is as useless as naming waves.

Valentine's palette is mostly grey. Next comes blue (borage, cobalt, silk, robe, egg). Then white. Some inherent greens. But she draws most often from the greyer end of the grey scale. It could be manifest in a postmortem jaw, dusty glass, a sky, one degree Fahrenheit, a lone sock under a sickbed; the water is grey, and the long wall where one exits a car. Grey is the intermediate state she inhabits with no apparent effort. In the grey space, the bardo, the spirit starts to find shape, to find internal structure.

When Richmond is finally        one of the world’s great capitals I will line the streets with apple trees

“Jena before us in the lovely valley” thus my mother on a postcard from a walking holiday on the banks of the Saale, she was spending a week at the spa of Kosen; long forgotten now, the ancestor no more, her script a subject for graphology, years of becoming, years of illusion, only those words I’ll never forget. It wasn’t a great picture, no class, there was not enough blossom to justify lovely, poor paper, no pulp-free mass, also the hills weren’t green with vineyards, but she was from back-country hovels, so the valleys probably did strike her as lovely, she didn’t need laid paper or four-color print, she supposed others would see what she had seen. It was something said at a venture, an exaltation had prompted it, the landscape had moved her, so she asked the waiter for a postcard, and yet—

“Let ’ s be the same wound if we must bleed. Let ’ s fight side by side, even if the enemy is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine.” —Tommy Olofsson, Sweden I’m not interested in who suffered the most. I’m interested in people getting over it. Once when my father was a boy a stone hit him on the head. Hair would never grow there. Our fingers found the tender spot and its riddle: the boy who has fallen stands up. A bucket of pears in his mother’s doorway welcomes him home. The pears are not crying. Later his friend who threw the stone says he was aiming at a bird. And my father starts growing wings. Each carries a tender spot: something our lives forgot to give us. A man builds a house and says, “I am native now.” A woman speaks to a tree in place of her son. And olives come. A child’s poem says, “I don’t like wars, they end up with monuments.” He’s painting a bird with wings wide enough to cover two roofs at once. Why are we so monumentally slow? Soldiers stalk a pharmacy: big guns, little pills. If you tilt your head just slightly it’s ridiculous. There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow. I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds. Something pokes us as we sleep. It’s late but everything comes next.

And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon Englands mountains green: And was the holy Lamb of God, On Englands pleasant pastures seen! And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire! I will not cease from Mental Fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem, In Englands green & pleasant Land.

The small grey cloudy louse that nests in my beard Is not, as some have called it, ‘a pearl of God’ — No, it is a fiery tormentor Waking me at two a.m. Or thereabouts, when the lights are still on In the houses in the pa, to go across thick grass Wet with rain, feet cold, to kneel For an hour or two in front of the red flickering Tabernacle light — what He sees inside My meandering mind I can only guess — A madman, a nobody, a raconteur Whom He can joke with — ‘Lord,’ I ask Him, ‘Do You or don’t You expect me to put up with lice?’ His silent laugh still shakes the hills at dawn.