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When Americans say a man takes liberties, they mean he’s gone too far. In Philadelphia today I saw a kid on a leash look mom-ward and announce his fondest wish: one bicentennial burger, hold the relish. Hold is forget, in American. On the courts of Philadelphia the rich prepare to serve, to fault. The language is a game as well, in which love can mean nothing, doubletalk mean lie. I’m saying doubletalk with me. I’m saying go so far the customs are untold. Make nothing without words, and let me be the one you never hold.

The carpet in the kindergarten room was alphabet blocks; all of us fidgeting on bright, primary letters. On the shelf sat that week's inflatable sound. The th was shaped like a tooth. We sang about brushing up and down, practiced exhaling while touching our tongues to our teeth. Next week, a puffy U like an upside-down umbrella; the rest of the alphabet deflated. Some days, we saw parents through the windows to the hallway sky.Look, a fat lady, a boy beside me giggled. Until then I'd only known my mother as beautiful.

There were distinctive dips and shivers in the various foliage, syncopated, almost cadenced in the way that once made him invent “understanding.” * Now the boss could say “parameters” and mean something like “I’ll pinch.” By repeating the gesture exactly the woman awakened an excited suspicion in the infant. When he awakened she was just returning from one of her little trips. It’s common to confuse the distance with flirtation: that expectant solemnity which seems to invite a kiss. * He stroked her carapace with his claw. They had developed a code in which each word appeared to refer to some abdicated function. Thus, in a department store, Petite Impressions might neighbor Town Square. But he exaggerated it by mincing words like “micturition,” setting scenes in which the dainty lover would pretend to leave. * Was it sadness or fear? He still wasn’t back. The act of identification, she recognized, was always a pleasure, but this lasting difference between sense and recognition made her unhappy or afraid. Once she was rewarded by the beams of headlights flitting in play.

T HERE are no handles upon a language Whereby men take hold of it And mark it with signs for its remembrance. It is a river, this language, Once in a thousand years Breaking a new course Changing its way to the ocean. It is mountain effluvia Moving to valleys And from nation to nation Crossing borders and mixing. Languages die like rivers. Words wrapped round your tongue today And broken to shape of thought Between your teeth and lips speaking Now and today Shall be faded hieroglyphics Ten thousand years from now. Sing—and singing—remember Your song dies and changes And is not here to-morrow Any more than the wind Blowing ten thousand years ago.

To Mary — — 1. So now my summer task is ended, Mary, And I return to thee, mine own heart's home; As to his Queen some victor Knight of Fa ë ry, Earning bright spoils for her inchanted dome; Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become A star among the stars of mortal night, If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, Its doubtful promise thus I would unite With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light. 2. The toil which stole from thee so many an hour Is ended,—and the fruit is at thy feet! No longer where the woods to frame a bower With interlaced branches mix and meet, Or where with sound like many voices sweet, Water-falls leap among wild islands green, Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen: But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. 3. Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near school-room, voices, that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes— The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 4. And then I clasped my hands and looked around— —But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground— So without shame, I spake:—"I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannise Without reproach or check." I then controuled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 5. And from that hour did I with earnest thought Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught I cared to learn, but from that secret store Wrought linked armour for my soul, before It might walk forth to war among mankind; Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more Within me, till there came upon my mind A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 6. Alas, that love should be a blight and snare To those who seek all sympathies in one!— Such once I sought in vain; then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone:— Yet never found I one not false to me, Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee. 7. Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain; How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, And walked as free as light the clouds among, Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long. 8. No more alone through the world's wilderness, Although I trod the paths of high intent, I journeyed now: no more companionless, Where solitude is like despair, I went.— There is the wisdom of a stern content When Poverty can blight the just and good, When Infamy dares mock the innocent, And cherished friends turn with the multitude To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood! 9. Now has descended a serener hour, And with inconstant fortune, friends return; Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power Which says:—Let scorn be not repaid with scorn. And from thy side two gentle babes are born To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn; And these delights, and thou, have been to me The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee. 10. Is it, that now my inexperienced fingers But strike the prelude of a loftier strain? Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again, Though it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign, And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway Holier than was Amphion's? I would fain Reply in hope—but I am worn away, And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey. 11. And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak: Time may interpret to his silent years. Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, And in the light thine ample forehead wears, And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears: And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 12. They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child. I wonder not—for One then left this earth Whose life was like a setting planet mild Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled Of its departing glory; still her fame Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name. 13. One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, Which was the echo of three thousand years; And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, As some lone man who in a desart hears The music of his home:—unwonted fears Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares, Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place. 14. Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind! If there must be no response to my cry— If men must rise and stamp with fury blind On his pure name who loves them,—thou and I, Sweet Friend! can look from our tranquillity Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,— Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight, That burn from year to year with unextinguished light.

Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me; I said there was naething I hated like men: The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me. He spak o' the darts in my bonie black een, And vow'd for my love he was diein; I said he might die when he liked for Jean: The Lord forgie me for liein, for liein, The Lord forgie me for liein! A weel-stocked mailen, himsel for the laird, And marriage aff-hand, were his proffers: I never loot on that I ken'd it, or car'd, But thought I might hae waur offers, waur offers, But thought I might hae waur offers. But what wad ye think? in a fortnight or less, (The deil tak his taste to gae near her!) He up the lang loan to my black cousin Bess, Guess ye how, the jad! I could bear her, could bear her Guess ye how, the jad! I could bear her. But a' the niest week I fretted wi' care, I gaed to the tryste o' Dalgarnock, And wha but my fine fickle lover was there, I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock, a warlock. I glowr'd as I'd seen a warlock. But owre my left shoulder I gae him a blink, Lest neibors might say I was saucy; My wooer he caper'd as he'd been in drink, And vow'd I was his dear lassie, dear lassie, And vow'd I was his dear lassie. I spier'd for my cousin fu' couthy and sweet, Gin she had recover'd her hearin, And how her new shoon fit her auld shachl't feet— But, heavens! how he fell a swearin, a swearin, But, heavens! how he fell a swearin. He begg'd, for gudesake, I wad be his wife, Or else I wad kill him wi' sorrow: So e'en to preserve the poor body in life, I think I maun wed him to-morrow, to-morrow, I think I maun wed him to-morrow.

Breakfast Tacos, from the series Seven Days, 2003, by Chuck Ramirez Let me be your last meal. Let me harvest the notes I took from your mother’s watery hands, street vendors in Rome, Ms. Rosie from our taquería, you: in the sun, in the open air, let me give you zucchini and their elusive blossoms — my arms, my hands. Pumpkiny empanadas of my feet, pulpy as a newborn’s. Guisada’d loin of my calf muscle. On a plate white and crisp as the ocean, lemoned eyeballs like two scallops. The red, ripe plum of my mouth. Perhaps with coffee, you’d have the little lobe of my ear sugared as a wedding cookie. The skin of my belly, my best chicharrón, scrambled with the egg of my brain for your breakfast tacos. My lengua like lengua. Mi pescuezo, el mejor hueso. Let me be your last meal: mouthfuls of my never-to-be-digested face, my immovable femur caught in your throat like a fish bone. Let my body be what could never leave your body.

Saturday, April 5. Welles’s Othello: black and white grid of rage, steam of sheer fury spewing from the vent of violence that followed where they went. Wind howled on the battlements, but sun gilded glum canals. The lovers floated beneath black bridges, coupled in stone rooms. The unrepentant villain (at the start so all the rest was flashback) dangled from a cage squinting inscrutably at the funeral procession winding through the town below. The air was full of wailing. Knives of sunlight glittered on the sea. We lurched out onto Fifty-Seventh Street. You said “I think I’m dying.” Next week your eyes went out. Shining under the lamp, your blue gaze, now opaque, your face drawn sharper but still beautiful: from this extremity you can attempt to rise to rage and grief. Or you can yield to the cozy quicksand of the bed. You wave your hand at walls of books: “What do I do? Do I throw all these away?” Their anecdotes, their comforts—now black glass.

Fill yourself up with the forsythias and when the lilacs flower, stir them in too with your blood and happiness and wretchedness, the dark ground that seems to come with you. Sluggish days. All obstacles overcome. And if you say: ending or beginning, who knows, then maybe—just maybe—the hours will carry you into June, when the roses blow.

Standing at the glass-paneled wall of Liza’s kitchen at the old house half-hidden Over a mile up Canyon Road in Joshua’s gated compound I’m just smoking a joint & looking down at the dusk dusting the Malibu lights as they flare Along the coastline below & I can hear the ripped-up Buick fenders & Caddy bumpers slammed around out in the barn studio as they’re slowly Torched into art as Joshua moves the spitting arc-welder Over armatures of rebar shaping a dozen abstract guitars or mandolins while its Acetylene tongue ticks in the black shade of his visor Once in a while his back-in-the-day transistor radio hooked on a nail bent in the wall Cuts through the sizzle with a hit of his that’s slipped Lately back into fashion & I’ve watched him slowly lift the head of that torch until it angles Against the turquoise plastic moon of the radio dial As if he might melt it all back to a few black platters — those times as lost as song