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How dumb he was to wipe the blood from his eye where he was sucker-punched and stagger out onto the Plaza blind. He had been waiting all night for the acorn moon and eating pineapple topping over his ice cream and arguing either physics or philosophy. He thinks, at this late date, it was the cave again throwing a shadow, although it may have been only some way of reconciling the two oblivious worlds, which was his mission anyhow— if only there was a second moon. He had a kind of beard and though he could practically lift the front end of a car and was already reading Blake, he had never yet tasted honey.

I am looking for a past I can rely on in order to look to death with equanimity. What was given me: my mother’s largeness to protect me, my father’s regularity in coming home from work at night, his opening the door silently and smiling, pleased to be back and the lights on in all the rooms through which I could run freely or sit at ease at table and do my homework undisturbed: love arranged as order directed at the next day. Going to bed was a journey.

Snake River Country I now remembered slowly how I came, I, sometime living, sometime with a name, Creeping by iron ways across the bare Wastes of Wyoming, turning in despair, Changing and turning, till the fall of night, Then throbbing motionless with iron might. Four days and nights! Small stations by the way, Sunk far past midnight! Nothing one can say Names the compassion they stir in the heart. Obscure men shift and cry, and we depart. And I remembered with the early sun That foul-mouthed barber back in Pendleton, The sprawling streets, the icy station bench, The Round-up pennants, the latrinal stench. These towns are cold by day, the flesh of vice Raw and decisive, and the will precise; At night the turbulence of drink and mud, Blue glare of gas, the dances dripping blood, Fists thudding murder in the shadowy air, Exhausted whores, sunk to a changeless stare. Alive in empty fact alone, extreme, They make each fact a mortuary dream. Once when the train paused in an empty place, I met the unmoved landscape face to face; Smoothing abysses that no stream could slake, Deep in its black gulch crept the heavy Snake, The sound diffused, and so intently firm, It seemed the silence, having change nor term. Beyond the river, gray volcanic stone In rolling hills: the river moved alone. And when we started, charged with mass, and slow, We hung against it in an awful flow. Thus I proceeded until early night, And, when I read the station’s name aright, Descended—at the bidding of a word! I slept the night out where the thought occurred, Then rose to view the dwelling where I lay. Outside, the bare land stretching far away; The frame house, new, fortuitous, and bright, Pointing the presence of the morning light; A train’s far screaming, clean as shining steel Planing the distance for the gliding heel. Through shrinking frost, autumnal grass uncurled, In naked sunlight, on a naked world.

Anghiari is medieval, a sleeve sloping down A steep hill, suddenly sweeping out To the edge of a cliff, and dwindling. But far up the mountain, behind the town, We too were swept out, out by the wind, Alone with the Tuscan grass. Wind had been blowing across the hills For days, and everything now was graying gold With dust, everything we saw, even Some small children scampering along a road, Twittering Italian to a small caged bird. We sat beside them to rest in some brushwood, And I leaned down to rinse the dust from my face. I found the spider web there, whose hinges Reeled heavily and crazily with the dust, Whole mounds and cemeteries of it, sagging And scattering shadows among shells and wings. And then she stepped into the center of air Slender and fastidious, the golden hair Of daylight along her shoulders, she poised there, While ruins crumbled on every side of her. Free of the dust, as though a moment before She had stepped inside the earth, to bathe herself. I gazed, close to her, till at last she stepped Away in her own good time. Many men Have searched all over Tuscany and never found What I found there, the heart of the light Itself shelled and leaved, balancing On filaments themselves falling. The secret Of this journey is to let the wind Blow its dust all over your body, To let it go on blowing, to step lightly, lightly All the way through your ruins, and not to lose Any sleep over the dead, who surely Will bury their own, don’t worry.

Wolbe dich, Welt: Wenn die Totenmuschel heranschwimmt, will es hier läuten. Vault over, world: when the seashell of death washes up there will be a knelling. —Paul Celan, Stimmen (Voices) Death knocks all night at my door. The soul answers, and runs from the water in my throat. Water will sustain me when I climb the steep hill that leads to a now familiar place. I began, even as a child, to learn water's order, and, as I grew intact, the feel of its warmth in a new sponge, of its weight in a virgin towel. I have earned my wine in another's misery, when rum bathed a sealed throat and cast its seal on the ground. I will be bound, to the one who leads me away, by the ornaments on my wrists, the gold dust in my ears, below my eye and tied to my loincloth in a leather pouch. They dress me now in my best cloth, and fold my hands, adorned with silk, against my left cheek. Gold lies with me on my left side. Gold has become the color of distance, and of your sorrow. Sorrow lies, red clay on my brow. Red pepper caresses my temples. I am adorned in the russet-brown message the soul brings from its coming-to-be. There is a silken despair in my body that grief shakes from it, a cat's voice, controlled by palm wine and a widow's passion. It is time to feed the soul —a hen, eggs, mashed yams— and encourage the thirst resting near the right hand I see before me. Always I think of death. I cannot eat. I walk in sadness, and I die. Yet life is the invocation sealed in the coffin, and will walk through our wall, passing and passing and passing, until it is set down, to be lifted from this body's habitation. I now assume the widow's pot, the lamp that will lead me through solitude, to the edge of my husband's journey. I hold three stones upon my head, darkness I will release when I run from the dead, with my eyes turned away toward another light. This is the day of rising. A hut sits in the bush, sheltered by summe, standing on four forked ends. We have prepared for the soul's feast with pestle, mortar, a strainer, three hearthstones, a new pot and new spoon. Someone has stripped the hut's body and dressed it with the edowa. Now, when the wine speaks and the fire has lifted its voice, the dead will be clothed in hair, the signs of our grief. Sun closes down on an intensity of ghosts. It is time to close the path. It is time for the snail's pace of coming again into life, with the world swept clean, the crying done, and our ordinary garments decent in the dead one's eyes.

What never comes when called. What hides when held. Guest most at home where least expected. Vagrant balm of Gilead. What, soon as here, becomes the body’s native ground and, soon as not, its banishment. Coming and going, indifferent, magisterial. My lovely daughter— walking me to the car to say goodbye the day I left to keep watch at my brother’s bedside— suddenly singing “I feel pretty, oh so pretty” as she raised her arms up in a loose oval over her head and pirouetted all along the walk. Savage and magisterial— the joy of it, the animal candor of each arabesque, each leaping turn and counterturn, her voice now wobbly with laughter, “And I pity any girl who isn’t me tonight.” Savagely beautiful, not so much like the lion that the camera freezes in mid- pounce, claws outstretched for the stumbling antelope, as like the herd escaping that the camera pans to, zig- zagging, swerving as one, their leaping strides now leaping higher, faster, even after, it seems, the fear subsides— after the fear and the relief they keep on running for nothing but the joy of running, though it could be any one of them is running from its fallen mother or father, sister or brother, across the wide savanna, under a bright sun into fresher grass.

There is joy in the woods just now, The leaves are whispers of song, And the birds make mirth on the bough And music the whole day long, And God! to dwell in the town In these springlike summer days, On my brow an unfading frown And hate in my heart always— A machine out of gear, aye, tired, Yet forced to go on—for I’m hired. Just forced to go on through fear, For every day I must eat And find ugly clothes to wear, And bad shoes to hurt my feet And a shelter for work-drugged sleep! A mere drudge! but what can one do? A man that’s a man cannot weep! Suicide? A quitter? Oh, no! But a slave should never grow tired, Whom the masters have kindly hired. But oh! for the woods, the flowers Of natural, sweet perfume, The heartening, summer showers And the smiling shrubs in bloom, Dust-free, dew-tinted at morn, The fresh and life-giving air, The billowing waves of corn And the birds’ notes rich and clear:— For a man-machine toil-tired May crave beauty too—though he’s hired.

Joy of my life, full oft for loving you I bless my lot, that was so lucky placed: But then the more your own mishap I rue, That are so much by so mean love embased. For had the equal heavens so much you graced In this as in the rest, ye might invent Some heavenly wit, whose verse could have enchased Your glorious name in golden monument. But since ye deign’d so goodly to relent To me your thrall, in whom is little worth, That little that I am shall all be spent In setting your immortal praises forth; Whose lofty argument uplifting me Shall lift you up unto an high degree.

Bring the oncoming train into focus. Tell me your theory of the market. Pupils dilate, trees fall, I practice transference in my downtime. Think of my mother watering plants. Is everybody really watching? Blog me. Add to my Wiki entry. Date me. Reply to my electronic flirt. My mother told me she’d nominate me for that award, if she could bear the proxy. Show me your tits. I shaved my balls. I took out a second mortgage. Motherhood frightens the elms, carves its sorry initials into the sky’s prolapsed anus. Each sadness passes through me like a gallstone. My valve leaks an amniotic canopy over the bar I’m fragging. I’m a fragment, a tender button. I saw my first beetle in the periphery. Lake Shore Drive against the ruins, the stain of lake-effect snow a special effect, the only weather exhibiting any real affect.

When beauty breaks and falls asunder I feel no grief for it, but wonder. When love, like a frail shell, lies broken, I keep no chip of it for token. I never had a man for friend Who did not know that love must end. I never had a girl for lover Who could discern when love was over. What the wise doubt, the fool believes— Who is it, then, that love deceives?