437 Death poems

When we gathered at the house, while the men all looked at their shoes and the women whispered,baby, baby, baby, she sat down with a fist full of paper napkins and folded them into birds. When she filled her hands, she crossed the room to the hearth and threw a bird into the flames, then another, then another until she had destroyed all she created. Years later when I asked her what she meant, she couldn’t remember.The worst has already happened, she said.What good is metaphor to us now?

For Adrienne Rich [Our burden to carry as she did shift the weight of song, heft and gnosis “body poetics” as a total event her fullness rare in the amnesiac Kulchur awake, awareness & urgency when poetry serves] name appears everywhere and in dream body armor removed what now, legacy,archivum we female archons preserve of intensity a durance a hand you recognize (sounds sound) assurance as lives on drank of that drank of this almost suffocated, then drowned downed but never what only she could only know as herself living in the brute time speak of a syntax of rendition? the politics of Empire chip away as poetry attests,give it up curve of a water-starved globe to follow and be following? racism, sexism, struggle everything in intense grasp of consciousness — cut in crystal observation for her rapid and perched intellectus privacy opens to vibrant light this is stuff of Eros, of empathy passionate edge of Adrienne the American Skeptic I feel you consociational in this light a term of anthropology, to study intersections in the annals we share intergenerational, interspecies, interlanguage move in parallelograms getting it right as she did Solstice, Boulder, Colorado 2012 High Park fires distress

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

I One among friends who stood above your grave I cast a clod of earth from those heaped there Down on the great brass-handled coffin lid. It rattled on the oak like a door knocker And at that sound I saw your face beneath Wedged in an oblong shadow under ground. Flesh creased, eyes shut, jaw jutting And on the mouth a grin: triumph of one Who has escaped from life-long colleagues roaring For him to join their throng. He's still half with us Conniving slyly, yet he knows he's gone Into that cellar where they'll never find him, Happy to be alone, his last work done, Word freed from world, into a different wood. II But we, with feet on grass, feeling the wind Whip blood up in our cheeks, walk back along The hillside road we earlier climbed today Following the hearse and tinkling village band. The white October sun circles Kirchstetten With colours of chrysanthemums in gardens, And bronze and golden under wiry boughs, A few last apples gleam like jewels. Back in the village inn, we sit on benches For the last toast to you, the honoured ghost Whose absence now becomes incarnate in us. Tasting the meats, we imitate your voice Speaking in flat benign objective tones The night before you died. In the packed hall You are your words. Your listeners see Written on your face the poems they hear Like letters carved in a tree's bark The sight and sound of solitudes endured. And looking down on them, you see Your image echoed in their eyes Enchanted by your language to be theirs. And then, your last word said, halloing hands Hold up above their heads your farewell bow. Then many stomp the platform, entreating Each for his horde, your still warm signing hand. But you have hidden away in your hotel And locked the door and lain down on the bed And fallen from their praise, dead on the floor. III (Ghost of a ghost, of you when young, you waken In me my ghost when young, us both at Oxford. You, the tow-haired undergraduate With jaunty liftings of the head. Angular forward stride, cross-questioning glance, A Buster Keaton-faced pale gravitas. Saying aloud your poems whose letters bit Ink-deep into my fingers when I set Them up upon my five-pound printing press: 'An evening like a coloured photograph A music stultified across the water The heel upon the finishing blade of grass.')

In Memory of Charles Baudelaire Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs; Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs, Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres, Son vent mélancolique à l'entour de leurs marbres, Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats. Les Fleurs du Mal. I Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before, Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat And full of bitter summer, but more sweet To thee than gleanings of a northern shore Trod by no tropic feet? II For always thee the fervid languid glories Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies; Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories, The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave That knows not where is that Leucadian grave Which hides too deep the supreme head of song. Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were, The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong, Blind gods that cannot spare. III Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother, Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us: Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous, Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime; The hidden harvest of luxurious time, Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech; And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep; And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each, Seeing as men sow men reap. IV O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, That were athirst for sleep and no more life And no more love, for peace and no more strife! Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping Spirit and body and all the springs of song, Is it well now where love can do no wrong, Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang Behind the unopening closure of her lips? Is it not well where soul from body slips And flesh from bone divides without a pang As dew from flower-bell drips? V It is enough; the end and the beginning Are one thing to thee, who art past the end. O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend, For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning, No triumph and no labour and no lust, Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust. O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought, Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night With obscure finger silences your sight, Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought, Sleep, and have sleep for light. VI Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over, Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet, Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, Such as thy vision here solicited, Under the shadow of her fair vast head, The deep division of prodigious breasts, The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, The weight of awful tresses that still keep The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests Where the wet hill-winds weep? VII Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision? O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom? What of despair, of rapture, of derision, What of life is there, what of ill or good? Are the fruits grey like dust or bright like blood? Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, The faint fields quicken any terrene root, In low lands where the sun and moon are mute And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers At all, or any fruit? VIII Alas, but though my flying song flies after, O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet, Some dim derision of mysterious laughter From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veiled head, Some little sound of unregarded tears Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes, And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs — These only, these the hearkening spirit hears, Sees only such things rise. IX Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, Far too far off for thought or any prayer. What ails us with thee, who art wind and air? What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow? Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire, Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, The low light fails us in elusive skies, Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind Are still the eluded eyes. X Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes, Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul, The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll I lay my hand on, and not death estranges My spirit from communion of thy song — These memories and these melodies that throng Veiled porches of a Muse funereal — These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold As though a hand were in my hand to hold, Or through mine ears a mourning musical Of many mourners rolled. XI I among these, I also, in such station As when the pyre was charred, and piled the sods, And offering to the dead made, and their gods, The old mourners had, standing to make libation, I stand, and to the gods and to the dead Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom, And what of honey and spice my seedlands bear, And what I may of fruits in this chilled air, And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb A curl of severed hair. XII But by no hand nor any treason stricken, Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King, The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing, Thou liest, and on this dust no tears could quicken There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear Down the opening leaves of holy poets' pages. Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns; But bending us-ward with memorial urns The most high Muses that fulfil all ages Weep, and our God's heart yearns. XIII For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often Among us darkling here the lord of light Makes manifest his music and his might In hearts that open and in lips that soften With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine. Thy lips indeed he touched with bitter wine, And nourished them indeed with bitter bread; Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came, The fire that scarred thy spirit at his flame Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed Who feeds our hearts with fame. XIV Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting, God of all suns and songs, he too bends down To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown, And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, And over thine irrevocable head Sheds light from the under skies. XV And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, And stains with tears her changing bosom chill: That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, That thing transformed which was the Cytherean, With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine Long since, and face no more called Erycine; A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god. Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell Did she, a sad and second prey, compel Into the footless places once more trod, And shadows hot from hell. XVI And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom, No choral salutation lure to light A spirit sick with perfume and sweet night And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. There is no help for these things; none to mend And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend, Will make death clear or make life durable. Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine And with wild notes about this dust of thine At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell And wreathe an unseen shrine. XVII Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. Out of the mystic and the mournful garden Where all day through thine hands in barren braid Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey, Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, Shall death not bring us all as thee one day Among the days departed? XVIII For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell, And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, With sadder than the Niobean womb, And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb. Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done; There lies not any troublous thing before, Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, All waters as the shore.

They found a man in the shrub that shields our lane — one fat white hand not tucked in the pit — and cordoned off a patch. We had nothing to explain it but The Post. And now the ground’s restrewn with tins and crisp bags; sleet jiggles the ivy; the blackbirds bob from floor to bole as each dull dusk settles in. And coming back at night we get on too, quickening to the safety lights, through shadows of  gates that thrust across the grit.

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth Upon the sides of mirth, Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing; Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs Upon the flesh to cleave, Set pains therein and many a grievous thing, And many sorrows after each his wise For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve. O Love's lute heard about the lands of death, Left hanged upon the trees that were therein; O Love and Time and Sin, Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath, Three lovers, each one evil spoken of; O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine Came softer with her praise; Abide a little for our lady's love. The kisses of her mouth were more than wine, And more than peace the passage of her days. O Love, thou knowest if she were good to see. O Time, thou shalt not find in any land Till, cast out of thine hand, The sunlight and the moonlight fail from thee, Another woman fashioned like as this. O Sin, thou knowest that all thy shame in her Was made a goodly thing; Yea, she caught Shame and shamed him with her kiss, With her fair kiss, and lips much lovelier Than lips of amorous roses in late spring. By night there stood over against my bed Queen Venus with a hood striped gold and black, Both sides drawn fully back From brows wherein the sad blood failed of red, And temples drained of purple and full of death. Her curled hair had the wave of sea-water And the sea's gold in it. Her eyes were as a dove's that sickeneth. Strewn dust of gold she had shed over her, And pearl and purple and amber on her feet. Upon her raiment of dyed sendaline Were painted all the secret ways of love And covered things thereof, That hold delight as grape-flowers hold their wine; Red mouths of maidens and red feet of doves, And brides that kept within the bride-chamber Their garment of soft shame, And weeping faces of the wearied loves That swoon in sleep and awake wearier, With heat of lips and hair shed out like flame. The tears that through her eyelids fell on me Made mine own bitter where they ran between As blood had fallen therein, She saying; Arise, lift up thine eyes and see If any glad thing be or any good Now the best thing is taken forth of us; Even she to whom all praise Was as one flower in a great multitude, One glorious flower of many and glorious, One day found gracious among many days: Even she whose handmaiden was Love—to whom At kissing times across her stateliest bed Kings bowed themselves and shed Pale wine, and honey with the honeycomb, And spikenard bruised for a burnt-offering; Even she between whose lips the kiss became As fire and frankincense; Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king, Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame, Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence. Then I beheld, and lo on the other side My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead. Sweet still, but now not red, Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died. And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade, The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes. And sweet, but like spoilt gold, The weight of colour in her tresses weighed. And sweet, but as a vesture with new dyes, The body that was clothed with love of old. Ah! that my tears filled all her woven hair And all the hollow bosom of her gown— Ah! that my tears ran down Even to the place where many kisses were, Even where her parted breast-flowers have place, Even where they are cloven apart—who knows not this? Ah! the flowers cleave apart And their sweet fills the tender interspace; Ah! the leaves grown thereof were things to kiss Ere their fine gold was tarnished at the heart. Ah! in the days when God did good to me, Each part about her was a righteous thing; Her mouth an almsgiving, The glory of her garments charity, The beauty of her bosom a good deed, In the good days when God kept sight of us; Love lay upon her eyes, And on that hair whereof the world takes heed; And all her body was more virtuous Than souls of women fashioned otherwise. Now, ballad, gather poppies in thine hands And sheaves of brier and many rusted sheaves Rain-rotten in rank lands, Waste marigold and late unhappy leaves And grass that fades ere any of it be mown; And when thy bosom is filled full thereof Seek out Death's face ere the light altereth, And say "My master that was thrall to Love Is become thrall to Death." Bow down before him, ballad, sigh and groan. But make no sojourn in thy outgoing; For haply it may be That when thy feet return at evening Death shall come in with thee.

He that had come that morning, One after the other, Over seven hills, Each of a new color, Came now by the last tree, By the red-colored valley, To a gray river Wide as the sea. There at the shingle A listing wherry Awash with dark water; What should it carry? There on the shelving, Three dark gentlemen. Might they direct him? Three gentlemen. “Cable, friend John, John Cable,” When they saw him they said, “Come and be company As far as the far side.” “Come follow the feet,” they said, “Of your family, Of your old father That came already this way.” But Cable said, “First I must go Once to my sister again; What will she do come spring And no man on her garden? She will say ‘Weeds are alive From here to the Stream of Friday; I grieve for my brother’s plowing,’ Then break and cry.” “Lose no sleep,” they said, “for that fallow: She will say before summer, ‘I can get me a daylong man, Do better than a brother.’ ” Cable said, “I think of my wife: Dearly she needs consoling; I must go back for a little For fear she die of grieving.” “Cable,” they said, “John Cable, Ask no such wild favor; Still, if you fear she die soon, The boat might wait for her.” But Cable said, “I remember: Out of charity let me Go shore up my poorly mother, Cries all afternoon.” They said, “She is old and far, Far and rheumy with years, And, if you like, we shall take No note of her tears.” But Cable said, “I am neither Your hired man nor maid, Your dog nor shadow Nor your ape to be led.” He said, “I must go back: Once I heard someone say That the hollow Stream of Friday Is a rank place to lie; And this word, now I remember, Makes me sorry: have you Thought of my own body I was always good to? The frame that was my devotion And my blessing was, The straight bole whose limbs Were long as stories— Now, poor thing, left in the dirt By the Stream of Friday Might not remember me Half tenderly.” They let him nurse no worry; They said, “We give you our word: Poor thing is made of patience; Will not say a word.” “Cable, friend John, John Cable,” After this they said, “Come with no company To the far side. To a populous place, A dense city That shall not be changed Before much sorrow dry.” Over shaking water Toward the feet of his father, Leaving the hills’ color And his poorly mother And his wife at grieving And his sister’s fallow And his body lying In the rank hollow, Now Cable is carried On the dark river; Nor even a shadow Followed him over. On the wide river Gray as the sea Flags of white water Are his company.

(excerpt) AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD Wherein, by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, Whom all do celebrate, who know they have one (For who is sure he hath a soul, unless It see, and judge, and follow worthiness, And by deeds praise it? He who doth not this, May lodge an inmate soul, but 'tis not his) When that queen ended here her progress time, And, as t'her standing house, to heaven did climb, Where loath to make the saints attend her long, She's now a part both of the choir, and song; This world, in that great earthquake languished; For in a common bath of tears it bled, Which drew the strongest vital spirits out; But succour'd then with a perplexed doubt, Whether the world did lose, or gain in this, (Because since now no other way there is, But goodness, to see her, whom all would see, All must endeavour to be good as she) This great consumption to a fever turn'd, And so the world had fits; it joy'd, it mourn'd; And, as men think, that agues physic are, And th' ague being spent, give over care, So thou, sick world, mistak'st thy self to be Well, when alas, thou'rt in a lethargy. Her death did wound and tame thee then, and then Thou might'st have better spar'd the sun, or man. That wound was deep, but 'tis more misery That thou hast lost thy sense and memory. 'Twas heavy then to hear thy voice of moan, But this is worse, that thou art speechless grown. Thou hast forgot thy name thou hadst; thou wast Nothing but she, and her thou hast o'erpast. For, as a child kept from the font until A prince, expected long, come to fulfill The ceremonies, thou unnam'd had'st laid, Had not her coming, thee her palace made; Her name defin'd thee, gave thee form, and frame, And thou forget'st to celebrate thy name. Some months she hath been dead (but being dead, Measures of times are all determined) But long she'ath been away, long, long, yet none Offers to tell us who it is that's gone. But as in states doubtful of future heirs, When sickness without remedy impairs The present prince, they're loath it should be said, "The prince doth languish," or "The prince is dead;" So mankind feeling now a general thaw, A strong example gone, equal to law, The cement which did faithfully compact And glue all virtues, now resolv'd, and slack'd, Thought it some blasphemy to say sh'was dead, Or that our weakness was discovered In that confession; therefore spoke no more Than tongues, the soul being gone, the loss deplore. But though it be too late to succour thee, Sick world, yea dead, yea putrified, since she Thy' intrinsic balm, and thy preservative, Can never be renew'd, thou never live, I (since no man can make thee live) will try, What we may gain by thy anatomy. Her death hath taught us dearly that thou art Corrupt and mortal in thy purest part. Let no man say, the world itself being dead, 'Tis labour lost to have discovered The world's infirmities, since there is none Alive to study this dissection; For there's a kind of world remaining still, Though she which did inanimate and fill The world, be gone, yet in this last long night, Her ghost doth walk; that is a glimmering light, A faint weak love of virtue, and of good, Reflects from her on them which understood Her worth; and though she have shut in all day, The twilight of her memory doth stay, Which, from the carcass of the old world free, Creates a new world, and new creatures be Produc'd. The matter and the stuff of this, Her virtue, and the form our practice is. And though to be thus elemented, arm These creatures from home-born intrinsic harm, (For all assum'd unto this dignity So many weedless paradises be, Which of themselves produce no venomous sin, Except some foreign serpent bring it in) Yet, because outward storms the strongest break, And strength itself by confidence grows weak, This new world may be safer, being told The dangers and diseases of the old; For with due temper men do then forgo, Or covet things, when they their true worth know. There is no health; physicians say that we At best enjoy but a neutrality. And can there be worse sickness than to know That we are never well, nor can be so? We are born ruinous: poor mothers cry That children come not right, nor orderly; Except they headlong come and fall upon An ominous precipitation. How witty's ruin! how importunate Upon mankind! It labour'd to frustrate Even God's purpose; and made woman, sent For man's relief, cause of his languishment. They were to good ends, and they are so still, But accessory, and principal in ill, For that first marriage was our funeral; One woman at one blow, then kill'd us all, And singly, one by one, they kill us now. We do delightfully our selves allow To that consumption; and profusely blind, We kill our selves to propagate our kind. And yet we do not that; we are not men; There is not now that mankind, which was then, When as the sun and man did seem to strive, (Joint tenants of the world) who should survive; When stag, and raven, and the long-liv'd tree, Compar'd with man, died in minority; When, if a slow-pac'd star had stol'n away From the observer's marking, he might stay Two or three hundred years to see't again, And then make up his observation plain; When, as the age was long, the size was great (Man's growth confess'd, and recompens'd the meat), So spacious and large, that every soul Did a fair kingdom, and large realm control; And when the very stature, thus erect, Did that soul a good way towards heaven direct. Where is this mankind now? Who lives to age, Fit to be made Methusalem his page? Alas, we scarce live long enough to try Whether a true-made clock run right, or lie. Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow. So short is life, that every peasant strives, In a torn house, or field, to have three lives. And as in lasting, so in length is man Contracted to an inch, who was a span; For had a man at first in forests stray'd, Or shipwrack'd in the sea, one would have laid A wager, that an elephant, or whale, That met him, would not hastily assail A thing so equall to him; now alas, The fairies, and the pigmies well may pass As credible; mankind decays so soon, We'are scarce our fathers' shadows cast at noon, Only death adds t'our length: nor are we grown In stature to be men, till we are none. But this were light, did our less volume hold All the old text; or had we chang'd to gold Their silver; or dispos'd into less glass Spirits of virtue, which then scatter'd was. But 'tis not so; w'are not retir'd, but damp'd; And as our bodies, so our minds are cramp'd; 'Tis shrinking, not close weaving, that hath thus In mind and body both bedwarfed us. We seem ambitious, God's whole work t'undo; Of nothing he made us, and we strive too, To bring our selves to nothing back; and we Do what we can, to do't so soon as he. With new diseases on our selves we war, And with new physic, a worse engine far. Thus man, this world's vice-emperor, in whom All faculties, all graces are at home (And if in other creatures they appear, They're but man's ministers and legates there To work on their rebellions, and reduce Them to civility, and to man's use); This man, whom God did woo, and loath t'attend Till man came up, did down to man descend, This man, so great, that all that is, is his, O what a trifle, and poor thing he is! If man were anything, he's nothing now; Help, or at least some time to waste, allow T'his other wants, yet when he did depart With her whom we lament, he lost his heart. She, of whom th'ancients seem'd to prophesy, When they call'd virtues by the name of she; She in whom virtue was so much refin'd, That for alloy unto so pure a mind She took the weaker sex; she that could drive The poisonous tincture, and the stain of Eve, Out of her thoughts, and deeds, and purify All, by a true religious alchemy, She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou knowest this, Thou knowest how poor a trifling thing man is, And learn'st thus much by our anatomy, The heart being perish'd, no part can be free, And that except thou feed (not banquet) on The supernatural food, religion, Thy better growth grows withered, and scant; Be more than man, or thou'rt less than an ant. Then, as mankind, so is the world's whole frame Quite out of joint, almost created lame, For, before God had made up all the rest, Corruption ent'red, and deprav'd the best; It seiz'd the angels, and then first of all The world did in her cradle take a fall, And turn'd her brains, and took a general maim, Wronging each joint of th'universal frame. The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then Both beasts and plants, curs'd in the curse of man. So did the world from the first hour decay, That evening was beginning of the day, And now the springs and summers which we see, Like sons of women after fifty be. And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out, The sun is lost, and th'earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets and the firmament They seek so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, All just supply, and all relation; Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that then can be None of that kind, of which he is, but he. This is the world's condition now, and now She that should all parts to reunion bow, She that had all magnetic force alone, To draw, and fasten sund'red parts in one; She whom wise nature had invented then When she observ'd that every sort of men Did in their voyage in this world's sea stray, And needed a new compass for their way; She that was best and first original Of all fair copies, and the general Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast Gilt the West Indies, and perfum'd the East; Whose having breath'd in this world, did bestow Spice on those Isles, and bade them still smell so, And that rich India which doth gold inter, Is but as single money, coin'd from her; She to whom this world must it self refer, As suburbs or the microcosm of her, She, she is dead; she's dead: when thou know'st this, Thou know'st how lame a cripple this world is

For Marilyn who died in January april 1 found on our driveway like a feather dropped by a crow 8 of spades, a playing card / we played Crazy Eights, slapping cards or holding them as if they were birds that might fly out of our hands decades ago, in our childhood like the translucent, whirling image I imagine, prismatic and phosphorescent — a murmuration of starlings swooping and iridescent but it dissolved onto a gray wall, undecorated / glimpses of us wearing our velvet Sunday best dresses, yours usually crimson, mine blue we never had nice shoes. Now you have returned to water thanks to the Neptune Society spreading your ashes over the Pacific april 2 Ceylon tea — that amber cup from Sri Lanka, popularly known here, before Americans became tea drinkers, as Orange Pekoe; our mother hated so many things — tea was rattlesnake venom to her I embraced it  /// What did you drink, Marilyn? I saw you only with a Coke or a glass of wine in your hand? Our mother whom you felt damaged you / your life       spirals, the twisting iridescent birds fly at me now                       scintillating, spinning I blink (Our mother drank many cups of coffee with cream a day.) Our sad mother I blink and tell it to go back to our childhood of muddy little shoes from walking in the spider-filled orange groves. There, the damaging must have Begun  / she loving me so much more than you. I wish there had been more stories like the one about the origin of her disliking tea at 17, she went to celebrate being made teacher of the one-room school she had attended and graduated from at her retiring teacher’s home, she was served for the first time — tea, she being from a German coffee-drinking family. Our mother hated it but politely choked it down. Would never again touch a drop of the poisonous beverage. From that story, we learned that our mother ritualized hating something — expected us to admire her for it. I took that negative pattern and spun it until I could have cloth enough for an eloquent garment. Perhaps the lesson simply made you feel yourself            helpless         ragged                      torn I never saw you that way, Marilyn, though perhaps incomplete. I pour a cup of Assam. Take a sip, let it wash through my mouth, down my age-damaged throat, think of you sitting with me in your Southern California backyard one May morning next to the camellia bush. I, as always with a cup of tea in my hand. You, smoking. I left all my family — you were part of it — left California and reinvented myself, even mythologized myself as a tan “California Girl.” You did not become an artist or a poet. I suppose that’s why you felt damaged. If only you knew how much imagination and sacrifice it took for me to get away. So many small things can save us from the damage you talked of. For me, drinking that first cup of Orange Pekoe and making tea my drink      risking rattlesnake poison with every steaming cup, a tiny emblem of a rebellion I still try to practice. You left us so quickly, Marilyn, and without any warning this January, your house full of cancelled aspirations — glass bowls, and cylinders, and huge globes filled with sea scallop shells you combed the California seashores to find, collecting these empty shells, washed free of their biological life.                                 Out of the ocean: we two different daughters of a sailor. april 3 The spinning                      the scissors               the measuring and thus our lives are given out from the heavens, with unfair allotments and varied, unaccountable fates, born when we are, and to whom you would have prevailed in an age where women had to spin, weave the material, cut it into britches and dresses, undergarments and sheets, sew and keep clean, warm, and comfortable a household full or a castle full / men children, hired hands, maidservants — you would have done it so well. But you would have died young in such a world — diabetes, asthma, chronic bronchial infections even in the 21st century where you lived to be 76       a world where all your skills were plied as substitute for being an artist. When I asked you a year ago, not knowing that you would die this January, what you would most like to have, if money were not the object — since clearly all your measuring, cutting, and sewing had been for economical reasons, not art — you thought for a bit, raising your chin. “A swimming pool in my backyard. One I could step into every morning, swim, float — maybe in the afternoon I’d go for a dip. Many evenings, I think,” she said to me.                     Longing for some ocean? In our portrait, if someone paints it, she will be sitting in a scallop shell, her many jars of seashells behind her head. I will be invisible, except for the spinning murmuration of birds that radiates past me. They read at her funeral, a poem from her journal about lying on the beach, the sand embracing her. How much she loved it / felt safe, felt released. Oh, Marilyn, all those seashells emptied of their living fleshy occupants. (the ugly parts that die and rot) now glorious empty rooms in which to live an imaginary life, to decorate, to create beauty, spaces to live a different life. What is left but your desires, locked in glass, and an image of you walking your beloved beaches, hands full of seashells, your footprints measured, then quickly filled with the tidal flow. april 4 my spinning, a whirlpool of faceted moving lights Everything is Numbers! down into a vortical glare that replaces my own mind’s desire Everything is Numbers! Everything is Numbers! floating down like the crow’s onyx feather the 8 of spades random card appearing last week over gravel 8 legs on a spider, the arachnid so many people seem to fear, yet I lose track of time, stare into the wall or any space to replace real images with my imaginary ones, some random spider, who spins my fate Crazy Eights, the child card game Marilyn and I played pieces of eight, the dollar of pirate Spain — our childhood in Orange County 8, a vertical infinity sign everything is numbers / your fire opal that Daddy brought to you from India, and our mother paid a jeweler to set it into a ring. You wore the ring more than sixty years. I suppose it was on your finger at death spinning,     spinning to scintillate and iridesce We never had nice shoes. april 5 Easter Sunday. You and I always dyed Easter eggs together, our mother busy at her forty-hour-a-week bookkeeper’s job. I was intrigued with the colors, but they never turned out so bright when coloring the eggs. You, the artist, were interested in the designs to transfer onto the eggs, cartoons, bunnies, chicks. We kept our eggs separated from each other, put them in separate bowls, neither caring for the other’s creation. Still we felt connected, even joyful, on those few holiday projects. Not enough to make us friends. My unwillingness to be like our classmates embarrassed you. You chose invisibility in school, rather than being known as “Diane’s Sister.” That unwillingness to be like others was what made me a poet. So many little things, but that early decision of yours, not to understand why I wanted to be weird, is what made you make so many other small choices, preventing you from becoming an artist. “Look away,” our mother said to us, when there were ugly things confronting us. I could not do that. You blame our mother, yet it was you who decided to look away, even though it meant not seeing the whole world, even if meant you didn’t become an artist. Poverty, of course, was the reason we never had nice shoes. april 6 All numbers have disappeared instead there are mushrooms fungi that has always seemed more artful than tasty Sipping a cup of tea / soothes me as the mushrooms in a veloute sauce never could. I feel stymied / a rider with no horse. I want only to watch the stories unfold / the secret stories about why you chose to marry and have children / why I did not / the stories I try to banish blot out, replace with the diamond dog. A murmuration of iridescent starlings, and the spider of eight, twirling on its silk line, projecting infinity art is made when you subject yourself to the unacceptable, then dredge yourself out, find a mineral replacement: infinity iridescer irised feather scintillater a crystalline body whirls releasing me from the history, the stories it’s so hard to tell. Until recent years, my sister and I either ignored or disliked each other. We fought continuously as children. I have in my wrist a black bump that protrudes near a vein. It’s the point of a pencil that broke off and penetrated my wrist as we struggled for the long yellow weapon. A pencil, the weapon of a writer. But there was no bleeding, no seeming-wound to be dressed. We never told our Mother, both too ashamed of our brutality. I’ve never asked a doctor about it, the pencil lead encapsulated in my wrist. Nor ever spoken of it to anyone. I always wonder that so much must remain a secret? Why we never had nice shoes. april 7 Young Marilyn, Old Marilyn. there are places on this planet where I find it hard to detect any beauty therefore, silence No nice shoes. april 8 there is silence april 9 Drinking a blend of traditional Darjeeling with a touch of Ceylon / this tea takes me back to a Viennese visit, drinking this very tea in the afternoon while my friend, Jonathan, ate their famous Sacher torte. The tea seemed particularly aromatic — “lightly scented with oil of bergamot and a hint of genuine Bourbon vanilla.” Wishing for the moment in the past to reappear. I didn’t know the tea from the Sacher Hotel was as famous as the cake until I found in my Upton Tea catalogue a listing for “Scented Darjeeling” under the heading “Earl Grey Blends” This tea, any cup of tea! Hard to believe. no! Sad to think my Mother almost spat out her first taste of tea. What worldly thing must I touch to bring Marilyn back into my sedate life, my sister Marilyn who died in January? Her hand — I’d like to imagine timidly touching her hand — Marilyn’s hand. Her right hand on which she wore the fire opal ring. In that hand she’d be holding a cigarette. Smoke and fire makes me think of her — not water, though it was that Pacific ocean filled with seashells that she was in touch with. My old hands, not really like hers at all. She had big hands for shaping things, while mine are small,      like birds.