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The image wears large round glasses opaque blue bigger than her upper face I don’t know what she means. You image He stood there elected. In your eyes — he would escape from the auto parts store to come home and read. As I see him dead he has black hair and brown eyes he doesn’t have to wear glasses because he’s dead. I haven’t seen a desert lily in twenty years but knowing they exist thrills me. One year I went home and they were everywhere powerful, blooming to exist and in my eyes. As I could be that And I’ll always see it. Presidents are scum compared to desert lilies. Oh all right, Daddy says. The dead talk this way playing but they don’t need to write lines — this line of thought. I still don’t quite know what your poems are like. Immediate — but complex. Lily? As complex as that? As complex as us. We are seeing you ... As we speak and see, together, thinking it. Do the words relax you? We are them, reading. Being dead is like reading.

For A.J. Verdelle Those mornings I traveled north on I 91, passing below the basalt cliff of East Rock where the elms discussed their genealogies. I was a chaplain at Hartford Hospital, took the Myers-Briggs with Sister Margaret, learned I was an I drawn to E s. In small group I said, “I do not like it— the way so many young black men die here unrecognized, their gurneys stripped, their belongings catalogued and unclaimed.” On the neonatal ICU, newborns breathed, blue, spider-delicate in a nest of tubes. A Sunday of themselves, their tissue purpled, their eyelids the film on old water in a well, their faces resigned in their see-through attics, their skin mottled mildewed wallpaper. It is correct to love even at the wrong time. On rounds, the newborns eyed me, each one like Orpheus in his dark hallway, saying: I knew I would find you, I knew I would lose you.

If he from heaven that filched that living fire Condemned by Jove to endless torment be, I greatly marvel how you still go free, That far beyond Prometheus did aspire. The fire he stole, although of heavenly kind, Which from above he craftily did take, Of liveless clods, us living men to make, He did bestow in temper of the mind. But you broke into heaven’s immortal store, Where virtue, honor, wit, and beauty lay; Which taking thence you have escaped away, Yet stand as free as ere you did before; Yet old Prometheus punished for his rape. Thus poor thieves suffer when the greater ‘scape.

An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still, Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess'd, Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill, Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest. In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake; And when by means to drive it out I try, With greater torments then it me doth take, And tortures me in most extremity. Before my face it lays down my despairs, And hastes me on unto a sudden death; Now tempting me to drown myself in tears, And then in sighing to give up my breath. Thus am I still provok'd to every evil By this good-wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil.

Methinks I see some crooked mimic jeer And tax my muse with this fantastic grace, Turning my papers, asks "what have we here?" Making withall some filthy antic face. I fear no censure, nor what thou canst say, Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigour lose. Think'st thou my wit shall keep the pack-horse way That ev'ry dudgeon low invention goes? Since sonnets thus in bundles are impress'd, And ev'ry drudge doth dull our satiate ear, Think'st thou my love shall in those rags be dress'd That ev'ry dowdy, ev'ry trull doth wear? Up to my pitch no common judgment flies: I scorn all earthly dung-bred scarabies.

Dear, why should you command me to my rest When now the night doth summon all to sleep? Methinks this time becometh lovers best; Night was ordain'd together friends to keep. How happy are all other living things Which, though the day disjoin by sev'ral flight, The quiet ev'ning yet together brings, And each returns unto his love at night! O thou that art so courteous else to all, Why should'st thou, Night, abuse me only thus, That ev'ry creature to his kind dost call, And yet 'tis thou dost only sever us? Well could I wish it would be ever day, If when night comes you bid me go away.

Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign grace Disperse their rays on every vulgar spirit, Whilst I in darkness in the self-same place Get not one glance to recompense my merit? So doth the ploughman gaze the wandering star, And only rest contented with the light, That never learned what constellations are, Beyond the bent of his unknowing sight, O! why should beauty, custom to obey, To their gross sense apply herself so ill? Would God I were as ignorant as they, When I am made unhappy by my skill; Only compelled on this poor good to boast, Heavens are not kind to them that know them most.

Calling to mind since first my love begun, Th' incertain times oft varying in their course, How things still unexpectedly have run, As t' please the fates by their resistless force: Lastly, mine eyes amazedly have seen Essex' great fall, Tyrone his peace to gain, The quiet end of that long-living Queen, This King's fair entrance, and our peace with Spain, We and the Dutch at length ourselves to sever: Thus the world doth and evermore shall reel. Yet to my goddess am I constant ever, Howe'er blind fortune turn her giddy wheel: Though heaven and earth prove both to me untrue, Yet am I still inviolate to you.

Clear Ancor, on whose silver-sanded shore My soul-shrin'd saint, my fair Idea lies, O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore Thy crystal stream, refined by her eyes, Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the spring Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers, Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers; Say thus, fair brook, when thou shalt see thy queen: Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand'ring years, And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft hath been, And here to thee he sacrific'd his tears. Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone, And thou, sweet Ancor, art my Helicon.

To Proverbs As Love and I, late harbour’d in one inn, With proverbs thus each other entertain: In love there is no lack, thus I begin, Fair words make fools, replieth he again; Who spares to speak, doth spare to speed (quoth I), As well (saith he) too forward, as too slow; Fortune assists the boldest, I reply, A hasty man (quoth he) ne’er wanted woe; Labour is light, where love (quoth I) doth pay, (Saith he) light burthen’s heavy, if far born; (Quoth I) the main lost, cast the bye away; You have spun a fair thread, he replies in scorn. And having thus awhile each other thwarted, Fools as we met, so fools again we parted.