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The stiff spokes of this wheel touch the sore spots of the earth. On the Potomac, swan-white power launches keep breasting the sulphurous wave. Otters slide and dive and slick back their hair, raccoons clean their meat in the creek. On the circles, green statues ride like South American liberators above the breeding vegetation— prongs and spearheads of some equatorial backland that will inherit the globe. The elect, the elected . . . they come here bright as dimes, and die dishevelled and soft. We cannot name their names, or number their dates— circle on circle, like rings on a tree— but we wish the river had another shore, some further range of delectable mountains, distant hills powdered blue as a girl’s eyelid. It seems the least little shove would land us there, that only the slightest repugnance of our bodies we no longer control could drag us back.

I They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they went to sea: In spite of all their friends could say, On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day, In a Sieve they went to sea! And when the Sieve turned round and round, And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’ They called aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big, But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig! In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’ Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. II They sailed away in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they sailed so fast, With only a beautiful pea-green veil Tied with a riband by way of a sail, To a small tobacco-pipe mast; And every one said, who saw them go, ‘O won’t they be soon upset, you know! For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long, And happen what may, it’s extremely wrong In a Sieve to sail so fast!’ Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. III The water it soon came in, it did, The water it soon came in; So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet In a pinky paper all folded neat, And they fastened it down with a pin. And they passed the night in a crockery-jar, And each of them said, ‘How wise we are! Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long, Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong, While round in our Sieve we spin!’ Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. IV And all night long they sailed away; And when the sun went down, They whistled and warbled a moony song To the echoing sound of a coppery gong, In the shade of the mountains brown. ‘O Timballo! How happy we are, When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar, And all night long in the moonlight pale, We sail away with a pea-green sail, In the shade of the mountains brown!’ Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. V They sailed to the Western Sea, they did, To a land all covered with trees, And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart, And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart, And a hive of silvery Bees. And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws, And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree, And no end of Stilton Cheese. Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. VI And in twenty years they all came back, In twenty years or more, And every one said, ‘How tall they’ve grown!’ For they’ve been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone, And the hills of the Chankly Bore; And they drank their health, and gave them a feast Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast; And everyone said, ‘If we only live, We too will go to sea in a Sieve,— To the hills of the Chankly Bore!’ Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.

In standing position with arms to the side, jump while spreading the legs and lift arms above the head. Jump back into standing position and up again, spreading the legs and lifting the arms above the head. Repeat When a M16 landmine is triggered, it will spring into the air and explode with a capacity to level everything in a 150 metre radius. Deadly shrapnel spreading a further 350 metres. Metal casings from an unexploded bomb can fetch 25,000 Vietnamese dong or $1 for a poor family in Vietnam. Men comb the forests and beaches of Quang Tri looking for the metal that will feed their family, risking their lives. Children working in the fields think it’s a toy they’ve found. Nguyen was hoeing a small piece of land his parents gave him when an unexploded U.S. military bomb was triggered and blew off both his hands.

I close my eyes and see him windmilling his arms as he plummets from the Mystic Tobin Bridge, to prove me wrong, to show me he was good, to atone for sins like seeds in the lopsided apple of his heart, but mostly to escape from me in the back of his cab, a Puerto Rican lawyer in a suit and tie. I hated the 111 bus, sweltering in my suit and tie with the crowd in the aisle, waiting to hit a bump on the Mystic Tobin Bridge so my head would finally burst through the ceiling like a giraffe on a circus train. I hated the 111 bus after eviction day in Chelsea District Court, translating the landlords and judges into Spanish so the tenants knew they had to stuff their clothing into garbage bags and steal away again, away from the 40-watt squint that followed them everywhere, that followed me because I stood beside them in court. I would daydream in the humidity of the bus, a basketball hero, flipping the balled-up pages of the law into the wastebasket at the office as the legal aid lawyers chanted my name. I hated the 111 bus. I had to take a taxicab that day. What the hell you doing here? said the driver of the cab to me in my suit and tie.You gotta be careful in this neighborhood. There’s a lotta Josés around here. The driver’s great-grandfather staggered off a boat so his great-grandson could one day drive me across the Mystic Tobin Bridge, but there was no room in the taxi for chalk and a blackboard. He could hear the sawing of my breath as I leaned into his ear, past the bulletproof barricade somehow missing, and said:I’m a José. I could see the 40-watt squint in his rearview mirror.I’m Puerto Rican, I said. It was exactly 5 pm , and we were stuck in traffic in a taxi on the Mystic Tobin Bridge. The driver stammered his own West Side Story without the ballet, how a Puerto Rican gang stole his cousin’s wallet years ago.You think I’m gonna rob you?

jumpsuits, they have changed paintings, I behind the concertina wire can't look at it anymore, that wall across which shadows play Sorry to be vague at such an hour. Were you When I called, I heard my voice anywhere near waking in the background Strange, reversible lines, I thought he was dead. He is better of it, pushing the glass away. How many songs can it hold, that thing I've seen in windows, has it changed singing, or hooded figures I didn't know it had a camera, some features are The blue of links, obscure beneath the face, the green We still don't have a word for Simulated drowning in embedded streams a perfect world

jumpsuits, they have changed painting, I behind the concertina wire can't look at it anymore, that wall across which shadows play Sorry to be vague at such an hour. Were you When I called, I heard my voice anywhere near waking in the background Strange, reversible lines, I thought he was dead. He is better of it, pushing the glass away. How many songs can it hold, that thing I've seen in windows, has it changed singing, or hooded figures I didn't know it had a camera, some features are The blue of links, obscure beneath the face, the green We still don't have a word for Simulated drowning in embedded streams a perfect world

When I was a boy and a man would die we’d say a verse when the hearse went by one car two car three car four someone knocking on the devil’s door. I smoked all night myself awake and saw the lights and the day break. When the sun was done with the final star I left the house and the door ajar and went to the church. The father was nice but the holy water was cold as ice. I found a friend and felt his hand fall through mine like crumbling sand. I went to hear the talk in the square but there were headless people there. I turned to the clock for the time of day but the hole in the wall had nothing to say. Callous of heaven and careless of hell you knew something you didn’t tell. The soul you said was only fear, and heaven, well heaven at best was here. So heaven is gone if that was it and the soul lies there in the private pit but hell is big and hell is a bone and hell comes in from the edge of alone. Hell is a dead girl who walks through the town and hunts for my bed to lay herself down.

I uproot & save mental venture I split the dream of the slow & neutral Persist & breathe My little flask Pointy wisp Pubescent valve Join the game I smoke & praise you Hew & raze you Jungle kill Bulldoze your sierra Fire to ash I wait & wait And you where are you Fragrant lantana Aim your voice In calm plains In silence wild Erasing the thirst The weightless altar insults the blood Awake diagonals Rot & Stand Go & go Flower gaining Plant your will!

Huru Welandes worc ne geswiceσ? monna ænigum σara σe Mimming can heardne gehealdan. —Waldere An axe angles from my neighbor’s ashcan; It is hell’s handiwork, the wood not hickory, The flow of the grain not faithfully followed. The shivered shaft rises from a shellheap Of plastic playthings, paper plates, And the sheer shards of shattered tumblers That were not annealed for the time needful. At the same curbside, a cast-off cabinet Of wavily warped unseasoned wood Waits to be trundled in the trash-man’s truck. Haul them off! Hide them! The heart winces For junk and gimcrack, for jerrybuilt things And the men who make them for a little money, Bartering pride like the bought boxer Who pulls his punches, or the paid-off jockey Who in the home stretch holds in his horse. Yet the things themselves in thoughtless honor Have kept composure, like captives who would not Talk under torture. Tossed from a tailgate Where the dump displays its random dolmens, Its black barrows and blazing valleys, They shall waste in the weather toward what they were. The sun shall glory in the glitter of glass-chips, Foreseeing the salvage of the prisoned sand, And the blistering paint peel off in patches, That the good grain be discovered again. Then burnt, bulldozed, they shall all be buried To the depth of diamonds, in the making dark Where halt Hephaestus keeps his hammer And Wayland’s work is worn away.

Just a shadow. Hardly that. But audible. Coming out of the woods, whispering Happily Ever After. Even in that light— stars with the skeletons of animals and old friends— visible to the eye behind the one always left open on the east side of the house, downhill. Where the coffee trees and hemp and the graves of old dogs lie, buried themselves in leaves and left to the sputtering wind of memory. & if that's not enough (he says to himself in the voice of a black-and-white actor whose name is a moth that keeps avoiding the tip of his flaming tongue) to bring you home, well, there it is again, already exhausted by your efforts to make it comfortable enough to stay. Impatient, already headed back down into the woods, whispering Once Upon A Time . . .