Jorie Graham

Mind

The slow overture of rain,

each drop breaking

without breaking into

the next, describes

the unrelenting, syncopated

mind. Not unlike

the hummingbirds

imagining their wings

to be their heart, and swallows

believing the horizon

to be a line they lift

and drop. What is it

they cast for? The poplars,

advancing or retreating,

lose their stature

equally, and yet stand firm,

making arrangements

in order to become

imaginary. The city

draws the mind in streets,

and streets compel it

from their intersections

where a little

belongs to no one. It is

what is driven through

all stationary portions

of the world, gravity's

stake in things, the leaves,

pressed against the dank

window of November

soil, remain unwelcome

till transformed, parts

of a puzzle unsolvable

till the edges give a bit

and soften. See how

then the picture becomes clear,

the mind entering the ground

more easily in pieces,

and all the richer for it.

The Way Things Work

is by admitting

or opening away.

This is the simplest form

of current: Blue

moving through blue;

blue through purple;

the objects of desire

opening upon themselves

without us; the objects of faith.

The way things work

is by solution,

resistance lessened or

increased and taken

advantage of.

The way things work

is that we finally believe

they are there,

common and able

to illustrate themselves.

Wheel, kinetic flow,

rising and falling water,

ingots, levers and keys,

I believe in you,

cylinder lock, pully,

lifting tackle and

crane lift your small head--

I believe in you--

your head is the horizon to

my hand. I believe

forever in the hooks.

The way things work

is that eventually

something catches.

Salmon

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,

in our motel room half-way through

Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past

the importance of beauty,

archaic,

not even hungry, not even endangered, driving deeper and deeper

into less. They leapt up falls, ladders,

and rock, tearing and leaping, a gold river,

and a blue river traveling

in opposite directions.

They would not stop, resolution of will

and helplessness, as the eye

is helpless

when the image forms itself, upside-down, backward,

driving up into

the mind, and the world

unfastens itself

from the deep ocean of the given. . .Justice, aspen

leaves, mother attempting

suicide, the white night-flying moth

the ants dismantled bit by bit and carried in

right through the crack

in my wall. . . .How helpless

the still pool is,

upstream,

awaiting the gold blade

of their hurry. Once, indoors, a child,

I watched, at noon, through slatted wooden blinds,

a man and woman, naked, eyes closed,

climb onto each other,

on the terrace floor,

and ride--two gold currents

wrapping round and round each other, fastening,

unfastening. I hardly knew

what I saw. Whatever shadow there was in that world

it was the one each cast

onto the other,

the thin black seam

they seemed to be trying to work away

between them. I held my breath.

As far as I could tell, the work they did

with sweat and light

was good. I'd say

they traveled far in opposite

directions. What is the light

at the end of the day, deep, reddish-gold, bathing the walls,

the corridors, light that is no longer light, no longer clarifies,

illuminates, antique, freed from the body of

that air that carries it. What is it

for the space of time

where it is useless, merely

beautiful? When they were done, they made a distance

one from the other

and slept, outstretched,

on the warm tile

of the terrace floor,

smiling, faces pressed against the stone.

San Sepolcro

In this blue light

I can take you there,

snow having made me

a world of bone

seen through to. This

is my house,

my section of Etruscan

wall, my neighbor's

lemontrees, and, just below

the lower church,

the airplane factory.

A rooster

crows all day from mist

outside the walls.

There's milk on the air,

ice on the oily

lemonskins. How clean

the mind is,

holy grave. It is this girl

by Piero

della Francesca, unbuttoning

her blue dress,

her mantle of weather,

to go into

labor. Come, we can go in.

It is before

the birth of god. No one

has risen yet

to the museums, to the assembly

line--bodies

and wings--to the open air

market. This is

what the living do: go in.

It's a long way.

And the dress keeps opening

from eternity

to privacy, quickening.

Inside, at the heart,

is tragedy, the present moment

forever stillborn,

but going in, each breath

is a button

coming undone, something terribly

nimble-fingered

finding all of the stops.

To a Friend Going Blind

Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,

I had to walk this town's entire inner

perimeter to find

where the medieval walls break open

in an eighteenth century

arch. The yellow valley flickered on and off

through cracks and the gaps

for guns. Bruna is teaching me

to cut a pattern.

Saturdays we buy the cloth.

She takes it in her hands

like a good idea, feeling

for texture, grain, the built-in

limits. It's only as an afterthought she asks

and do you think it's beautiful?

Her measuring tapes hang down, corn-blond and endless,

from her neck.

When I look at her

I think Rapunzel,

how one could climb that measuring,

that love. But I was saying,

I wandered all along the street that hugs the walls,

a needle floating

on its cloth. Once

I shut my eyes and felt my way

along the stone. Outside

is the cashcrop, sunflowers, as far as one can see. Listen,

the wind rattles in them,

a loose worship

seeking an object,

an interruption. Sara,

the walls are beautiful. They block the view.

And it feels rich to be

inside their grasp.

When Bruna finishes her dress

it is the shape of what has come

to rescue her. She puts it on.

Self-Portrait as Apollo and Daphne

The truth is this had been going on for a long time during which they both wanted it to last.

You can still hear them in that phase, the north and
south laid up against each other, constantly erasing
each minute with each minute.

You can still hear them, there, just prior to daybreak,
the shrill cheeps and screeches of the awakening thousands,
hysterical, for miles, in all the directions,

and there the whoo whoo of the nightfeeders, insolvent baseline,
shorn, almost the sound of thin air. . . .

Or there where the sun picks up on the bits of broken glass
throughout the miles of grass for just a fraction of an instant
(thousands of bits) at just one angle, quick, the evidence, the landfill,
then gone again, everything green, green . . . .

How he wanted, though, to possess her, to nail the erasures,

like a long heat on her all day once the daysounds set in, like a long analysis.

The way she kept slipping away was this: can you really
see me, can you really know I'm really who . . .
His touchings a rhyme she kept interrupting (no one
believes in that version anymore she whispered, no one
can hear it anymore, tomorrow, tomorrow,
like the different names of those girls
all one girl). . . . But how long could it
last?

He kept after her like sunlight (it's not what you think, she said)
frame after frame of it (it's not what you think you think)
like the prayer that numbers are praying (are they ascending are they
descending?)

He kept after her in the guise of the present,
minute after minute (are they ascending are they?)
until they seemed to quicken and narrow (like footprints

piling up, like footprints all blurred at the end of, at the scene of . . . )

until now is forever he whispered can't you get it to open,

present tense without end, slaughtered motion, kingdom of
heaven?--

the shards caught here and there--what did you do
before? or will you forgive me? or say
that you'll love me for

ever and ever

(is it a squeal of brakes is it a birthcry?)

(let x equal forever he whispered let y let y . . . )

as opposed to that other motion which reads Cast it upon the ground
and it shall become a serpent (and Moses fled before it),
which reads Put forth thy hand and take it by the tail
and it was a rod in his hand again--

That's when she stopped, she turned her face to the wind, shut her eyes--

She stopped she turned,
she would not be the end towards which he was ceaselessly tending,
she would not give shape to his hurry by being its destination,
it was wrong this progress, it was a quick iridescence
on the back of some other thing, unimaginable, a flash on the wing of . . .

The sun would rise and the mind would rise
and the will would rise and the eyes--The eyes--:
the whole of the story like a transcript of sight,
of the distance between them, the small gap he would close.

She would stop, there would be no chase scene, she would be who,
what?

The counting went on all around like a thousand birds
each making its own wind--who would ever add them up?--

and what would the sum become, of these minutes, each flapping
its wings, each after a perch,

each one with its call going unanswered,

each one signaling separately into the end of the daybreak,

the great screech of the instants, the pile-up,
the one math of hope, the prayer nowhere is praying,

frame after frame, collision of tomorrows--

No she would go under, she would leave him in the freedom

his autograph all over it, slipping, trying to notch it,

there in the day with him now, his day, but altered,

part of the view not one of the actors, she thought,

not one of the instances, not one of the examples,

but the air the birds call in,
the air their calls going unanswered marry in,
the calls the different species make, cross-currents, frettings,
and the one air holding the screeching separateness--
each wanting to change, to be heard, to have been changed--
and the air all round them neither full nor empty,
but holding them, holding them, untouched, untransformed.

What the Instant Contains

Presently Lyle gets into bed.

The amaryllis on the sill hum.

The dust starts inventing the afterwards.

He is not getting up again.

The dust starts inventing the afterwards.

The whole thing from the ground up.

The presently. The Lyle gets into bed.

The amaryllis on sill hum.

The roses on the wall grow virulent.

The dreadful increasing dimness.

Then even the wicked no longer matter.

Even the one who would steal the water of life goes under,

even the unread last 49 pages

of the mystery novel on the kitchen table,

(the sill under the amaryllis hums),

even the ancient family name,

even the woman he never found.

If you sit there, near him, in the sofa chair,

if you look at him he's sleeping now, curled,

the oxygen furious in its blank tubes,

you can hear the wind as it touches the panes,

then, as the wind drops, bushtips brushing the panes,

buds on the tips,

then, as the wind stills altogether,

the weight of air on the panes,

the face of the air not moving,

the time of day adhering to the panes,

the density of the light where the glass fits the frame

of the windows Lyle built,

in the walls Lyle built,

all of it adhering--glass to light, light to time--

all of it unable to advance any further,

here now, arrived. If you sit here,

if you sit in your attention watching him sleep,

if it is still sleep,

looking past the vials and the industrial oxygen tanks,

hearing the tap at the pane,

hearing the tap, click, as the wildgrasses rap

as the wind picks up,

looking into his closed face for the gaze,

you will see, if you an posit the stillness

that beats on its pendulum at the heart of the room,

x beats per minute,

if you can place it at the center,

the beat of the stillness on its tiny firm arc,

like a face on a string, perfect, back and forth,

to permit the center of the center to glow,

you will see the distance start to grow

on the shore of the endlessly lain-down face,

yellow shore which the wide hand holds--

right there on the pinpoint of the face in the room...

When he wakes I will give him some water.

I will try to feed him some soup.

We will try to drive back into the body

what roves around it,

will try to darken the body with a red flush,

make it affirm itself in relation to the light again,

make it know something, make it grow dull again,

instead of this translucence, this mirror becoming glass,

dents in it, sockets, tape on the left cheek

pulling the papery skin folds back

to hold the nostril open

to fit the radiant tube inside.

But now the face is going faster, faster

--floor sills dust going the other way,

the whole marriage pulling apart--his dream for the drawer,

waiting from skin--

Now he opens his eyes and looks across the room at me,

now there are men on the bed with him, many men, naked,

one puts his fist in another's mouth,

one puts his fingers in another's ears,

another's fingers are in there now too,

they put their hands on each other's feet, they roil,

there's a shield in the air but you can't see it,

it's the thing the dust makes when it's cast up,

there are elements from history,

the air hums, edges, undersides, beveled lips,

shadows behind the edges, ears, fingers,

Circe there on her throne in her shining robe

with golden mantle and the place was lovely

and nymphs and naiads waiting on her

carding no fleece, spinning no wool, but only

sorting, arranging from confusion

in separate baskets the bright-colored flowers,

the different herbs,

and where we had shoulders we have no shoulders

and where our arms were in their right places

there are no arms, there are no right places,

her song would move the wood, would stop the

streams, would stay the wandering birds,

her song would move the wood

would stop the stream

would stay the wandering afterwards. Tap tap.

Presently the cast-iron stove,

with metal fruit upon its wondrous flanks, is cold,

grapes swelling there, and apples, pears.

I put my hand on them.

I press my palm onto the icy fruit.

Tap tap the flowertips.

The heart of waiting. Tap.

There are two directions--fast--in the instant,

two, tangled up into each other, blurred, bled,

two motions in every stillness,

to make a body, waiting--

the motion into here, the firming up,

chest paper book face leaf branch drawer,

the order of events, days, days,

something like a head at the top, stiff,

the minutes flowing off into limbs, fingertips,

the trunk made of actions-that-can't-be-undone,

shield high,

the first minute of existence ruffling like feathers on hair

at the top of his crown, stilling,

the next minute arriving, stilling,

all of him standing there on his crucial deeds, on the out-

come, growing ever more still.

And then, faster and faster--fed by dream--

fed by each glance in the mirror however swift in passing,

moving suddenly in limbs that are not limbs,

moving with a will not yet an individual will--

and the room containing this flow or being contained

by it,

and Lyle momentarily on the crest till the wave breaks again,

and Lyle being distributed partly to him partly to her,

torn up and thrust,

(I want to forget it, I want to forget what I saw),

the face riding for a moment longer on the spray,

the look on the face riding after the face has

dissolved,

for just a moment longer the gaze in the eye looking out,

tossed out--

dust lifting and drifting--

specks and sparkles of dust in the empty room--

then us walking by a mirror on our way out and looking in,

and us being fooled for a moment longer

before we realize what's in there, look,

does not belong to us at all

but is an argument tossed out

in that instant

for the sake of discussion

by the queen on the other side

on her throne with shining robes and golden mantle

(and the place lovely)

towards him whom she loves

to convince him, to undo him.

I look in there at it a moment longer--my face--my

expression

flung out into the room where the cloth is not woven

only colors sorted back into that separateness

the earth in its fields has momentarily blurred--

columbine, fire-on-the-mountain, vetch and iris--

the iris

so early this year as we leave, and waiving patches of sun--

and then the blue vase I'll put them in for a time.

The Region of Unlikeness

You wake up and you don't know who it is there breathing

beside you (the world is a different place from what it

seems)

and then you do.

The window is open, its is raining, then it has just

ceased. What is the purpose of poetry, friend?

And you, are you one of those girls?

The floor which is cold touching your instep now,

it is more alive for those separate instances it crosses

up through you whole stalk into your mind?

Five, six times it gets in, step, step, across to the

window.

Then the birdcall tossing quick cuts your way,

a string strung a thousand years ago still taut....

He turns in his sleep.

You want to get out of here.

The stalls are going up in the street now for market.

don't wake up. Keep this in black and white. It's

Rome. The man's name...? The speaker

thirteen. Walls bare. Light like a dirty towel.

It's Claudio. He will overdose before the age of

thirty someone told me time

ago. In the bar below, the counterterrorist police

(three of them for this neighborhood) (the Old Ghetto)

take coffee. You hear them laugh.

When you lean out you see the butts

of the machineguns shake

in the door way.

You wake up from what? Have you been there?

What of this loop called being beating against the ends

of things?

The shutters, as you lean out to push them, creak.

Three boys seen from above run fast down the narrows,

laughing.

A black dog barks. Was it more than

one night? Was it all right? Where are

the parents? Dress and get to the door. (Repeat after me).

now the cold edge of the door crosses her body

into the field where it will grow. Now the

wrought iron banister--three floors of it--now the clack

clack of her sandals on stone ---

each a new planting ---different from all the others---

each planted fast, there, into that soil,

and the thin strip of light from the heavy street-door,

and the other light after her self has slipped through.

Later she will walk along and name them, on by

one---the back of the girl in the print dress carrying bread,

the old woman seen by looking up suddenly.

Later she will walk along, a word in

each moment, to slap them down onto the planting,

to keep them still.

But now it's the hissing of cars passing,

and Left into Campo dei Fiori--

And through it should be through flames dear god,

it's through clarity,

through the empty thing with minutes clicking in it,

right through it no resistance,

running a bit now, the stalls filling all around,

cats in the doorways,

the woman with artichokes starting it up

--this price then that price--

right through it, it not burning, not falling, no

piercing sound--

just the open, day pushing through it, any story pushing through.

Do you want her to go home now? do you want her late for school?

Here is her empty room,

a trill of light on the white bedspread. This is

exactly

how slow it moves.

The women are all in the stalls now.

The one behind the rack of flowers is crying

--put that in the field for later--into

captivity--

If I am responsible, it is for what? the field at the

end? the woman weeping in the row of colors? the exact

shades of color? the actions of the night before?

Is there a way to move through which makes it hard

enough--thorny, re-

membered? Push. Push through with this girl

recalled down to the last bit of cartilage, ash, running along the

river now, then down to the bridge, then quick,

home. Twenty years later

it's 9:15, I go for a walk, the butterflies are hatching,

(that minute has come),

and she is still running down the Santo Spirito, and I push her

to go faster, faster, little one, fool, push her, but I'm

in the field near Tie Siding, the new hatchlings

everywhere--they're drying in the grasses--they lift their wings up

to the

groundwind--so many--

I kick them up gently to make them make room--

clusters lift with each step--

and below the women leaning, calling the price out, handling

each fruit, shaking the dirt off. Oh wake up, wake

up, something moving through the air now, something in the ground

that

waits.

Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl

themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the

way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-

infolding,

entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a

visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by

minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the

dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where

they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into

itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly

invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing

motion that forces change--

this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets

what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing

is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by

each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,

also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something

at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through

in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is

what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen

now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only

something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.

I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.

It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

Le Manteau de Pascal

I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

It has a fine inner lining but it is

as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.

The woman who threw the threads in the two directions

has made, skillfully, something dark-true,

as the evening calls the bird up into

the branches of the shaven hedgerows,

to twitter bodily

a makeshift coat — the boxelder cut back stringently by the owner

that more might grow next year, and thicker, you know —

the birds tucked gestures on the inner branches —

and space in the heart,

not shade-giving, not

chronological...Oh transformer, logic, where are you here in this fold,

my name being called-out now but back, behind,

in the upper world....

I have a coat I am wearing I was told to wear it.

Someone knelt down each morning to button it up.

I looked at their face, down low, near me.

What is longing? what is a star?

Watched each button a peapod getting tucked back in.

Watched harm with its planeloads folded up in the sleeves.

Watched grappling hooks trawl through the late-night waters.

Watched bands of stations scan unable to ascertain.

There are fingers, friend, that never grow sluggish.

They crawl up the coat and don't miss an eyehole.

Glinting in kitchenlight.

Supervised by the traffic god.

Hissed at by grassblades that wire-up outside

their stirring rhetoric — this is your land, this is my my —

You do understanding, don't you, by looking?

The coat, which is itself a ramification, a city,

floats vulnerably above another city, ours,

the city on the hill (only with hill gone),

floats in illustration

of what once was believed, and thus was visible —

(all things believed are visible) —

floats a Jacob's ladder with hovering empty arms, an open throat,

a place where a heart might beat if it wishes,

pockets that hang awaiting the sandy whirr of a small secret,

folds where the legs could be, with their kneeling mechanism,

the floating fatigue of an after-dinner herald,

not guilty of any treason towards life except fatigue,

a skillfully cut coat, without chronology,

filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed —

as then it is, abruptly, the last stitch laid in, the knot bit off —

hung there in Gravity, as if its innermost desire,

numberless the awaitings flickering around it,

the other created things also floating but not of the same order, no,

not like this form, built so perfectly to mantle the body,

the neck like a vase awaiting its cut flower,

a skirting barely visible where the tucks indicate

the mild loss of bearing in the small of the back,

the grammar, so strict, of the two exact shoulders —

and the law of the shouldering —

and the chill allowed to skitter up through,

and those crucial spots where the fit cannot be perfect —

oh skirted loosening aswarm with lessenings,

with the mild pallors of unaccomplishment,

flaps night-air collects in,

folds... But the night does not annul its belief in,

the night preserves its love for, this one narrowing of infinity,

that floats up into the royal starpocked blue its ripped, distracted supervisor —

this coat awaiting recollection,

this coat awaiting the fleeting moment, the true moment, the hill,the vision of the hill,

and then the moment when the prize is lost, and the erotic tinglings of the dream of reason

are left to linger mildly in the weave of the fabric according to the rules,

the wool gabardine mix, with its grammatical weave,

never never destined to lose its elasticity,

its openness to abandonment,

its willingness to be disturbed.

July 11 ... Oaks: the organization of this tree is difficult. Speaking generally

no doubt the determining planes are concentric, a system of brief contiguous and

continuous tangents, whereas those of the cedar wd. roughly be called horizontals

and those of the beech radiating but modified by droop and by a screw-set towards

jutting points. But beyond this since the normal growth of the boughs is radiating

there is a system of spoke-wise clubs of green — sleeve-pieces. And since the

end shoots curl and carry young scanty leaf-stars these clubs are tapered, and I

have seen also pieces in profile with chiseled outlines, the blocks thus made

detached and lessening towards the end. However the knot-star is the chief thing:

it is whorled, worked round, and this is what keeps up the illusion of the tree.

Oaks differ much, and much turns on the broadness of the leaves, the narrower

giving the crisped and starry and catharine-wheel forms, the broader the flat-pieced

mailed or chard-covered ones, in wh. it is possible to see composition in dips, etc.

But I shall study them further. It was this night I believe but possibly the next

that I saw clearly the impossibility of staying in the Church of England.

How many coats do you think it will take?

The coat was a great-coat.

The Emperor's coat was.

How many coats do you think it will take?

The undercoat is dry. What we now want is?

The sky can analyse the coat because of the rips in it.

The sky shivers through the coat because of the rips in it.

The rips in the sky ripen through the rips in the coat.

There is no quarrel.

I take off my coat and carry it.

There is no emergency.

I only made that up.

Behind everything the sound of something dripping

The sound of something: I will vanish, others will come here, what is that?

The canvas flapping in the wind like the first notes of our absence

An origin is not an action though it occurs at the very start

Desire goes travelling into the total dark of another's soul

looking for where it breaks off

I was a hard thing to undo

The life of a customer

What came on the paper plate

overheard nearby

an impermanence of structure

watching the lip-reading

had loved but couldn't now recognize

What are the objects, then, that man should consider most important?

What sort of a question is that he asks them.

The eye only discovers the visible slowly.

It floats before us asking to be worn,

offering "we must think about objects at the very moment

when all their meaning is abandoning them"

and "the title provides a protection from significance"

and "we are responsible for the universe."

I have put on my doubting, my wager, it is cold.

It is an outer garment, or, conversely a natural covering,

so coarse and woolen, also of unknown origin,

a barely apprehensible dilution of evening into

an outer garment, or, conversely a natural covering,

to twitter bodily a makeshift coat,

that more might grow next year, and thicker, you know,

not shade-giving, not chronological,

my name being called out now but from out back, behind,

an outer garment, so coarse and woolen,

also of unknown origin, not shade-giving, not chronological,

each harm with its planeloads folded up in the sleeves,

you do understand, don't you, by looking?

the jacob's ladder with its floating arms its open throat,

that more might grow next year, and thicker, you know,

filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed,

the other created things also floating but not of the same order,

not shade-giving, not chronological,

you do understand, don't you, by looking?

a neck like a vase awaiting its cut flower,

filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed,

the moment the prize is lost, the erotic tingling,

the wool-gabardine mix, its grammatical weave

— you do understand, don't you, by looking? —

never never destined to lose its elasticity,

it was this night I believe but possibly the next

I saw clearly the impossibility of staying

filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed,

also of unknown origin, not shade-giving, not chronological

since the normal growth of boughs is radiating

a system of spoke-wise clubs of green — sleeve pieces —

never never destined to lose its elasticity

my name being called out now but back, behind,

hissing how many coats do you think it will take

"or try with eyesight to divide" (there is no quarrel)

behind everything the sound of something dripping

a system of spoke-wise clubs of green — sleeve pieces

filled with the sensation of suddenly being completed

the wool gabardine mix, the grammatical weave,

the never-never-to-lose-its-elasticity: my name

flapping in the wind like the first note of my absence

hissing how many coats do you think it will take

are you a test case is it an emergency

flapping in the wind the first note of something

overheard nearby an impermanence of structure

watching the lip-reading, there is no quarrel,

I will vanish, others will come here, what is that,

never never to lose the sensation of suddenly being

completed in the wind — the first note of our quarrel —

it was this night I believe or possibly the next

filled with the sensation of being suddenly completed,

I will vanish, others will come here, what is that now

floating in the air before us with stars a test case

that I saw clearly the impossibility of staying

Manteau Three

In the fairy tale the sky

makes of itself a coat

because it needs you

to put it

on. How can it do this?

It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-

track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages

still unconsummated,

the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies

and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books, their corridors,

resplendent memories of royal rooms now filtered up — by smoke, by

must — it tangles up into a weave,

tied up with votive offerings — laws, electricity —

what the speakers let loose from their tiny eternity,

what the empty streets held up as offering

when only a bit of wind

litigated in the sycamores,

oh and the flapping drafts unfinished thoughts

raked out of air,

and the leaves clawing their way after deep sleep set in,

and all formations — assonant, muscular,

chatty hurries of swarm (peoples, debris before the storm) —

things that grew loud when the street grew empty,

and breaths that let themselves be breathed

to freight a human argument,

and sidelong glances in the midst of things, and voice — yellowest

day alive — as it took place

above the telegram,

above the hand cleaving the open-air to cut its thought,

hand flung

towards open doorways into houses where

den-couch and silver tray

itch with inaction — what is there left now

to believe — the coat? — it tangles up a good tight weave,

windy yet sturdy,

a coat for the ages —

one layer a movie of bluest blue,

one layer the war-room mappers and their friends

in trenches

also blue,

one layer market-closings and one

hydrangeas turning blue

just as I say so,

and so on,

so that it flows in the sky to the letter,

you still sitting in the den below

not knowing perhaps that now is as the fairy tale

exactly, (as in the movie), foretold,

had one been on the right channel,

(although you can feel it alongside, in the house, in the food, the umbrellas,

the bicycles),

(even the leg muscles of this one grown quite remarkable),

the fairy tale beginning to hover above — onscreen fangs, at the desk

one of the older ones paying bills —

the coat in the sky above the house not unlike celestial fabric,

a snap of wind and plot to it,

are we waiting for the kinds to go to sleep?

when is it time to go outside and look?

I would like to place myself in the position

of the one suddenly looking up

to where the coat descends and presents itself,

not like the red shoes in the other story,

red from all we had stepped in,

no, this the coat all warm curves and grassy specificities,

intellectuals also there, but still indoors,

standing up smokily to mastermind,

theory emerging like a flowery hat,

there, above the head,

descending,

while outside, outside, this coat —

which I desire, which I, in the tale,

desire — as it touches the dream of reason

which I carry inevitably in my shoulders, in my very carriage, forgive me,

begins to shred like this, as you see it do, now,

as if I were too much in focus making the film shred,

it growing very hot (as in giving birth) though really

it being just evening, the movie back on the reel,

the sky one step further down into the world but only one step,

me trying to pull it down, onto this frame,

for which it seems so fitting,

for which the whole apparatus of attention had seemed to prepare us,

and then the shredding beginning

which sounds at first like the lovely hum

where sun fills the day to its fringe of stillness

but then continues, too far, too hard,

and we have to open our hands again and let it go, let it rise up

above us,

incomprehensible,

clicker still in my right hand,

the teller of the story and the shy bride,

to whom he was showing us off a little perhaps,

leaning back into their gossamer ripeness,

him touching her storm, the petticoat,

the shredded coat left mid-air, just above us,

the coat in which the teller's plot

entered this atmosphere, this rosy sphere of hope and lack,

this windiness of middle evening,

so green, oh what difference could it have made

had the teller needed to persuade her

further — so green

this torn hem in the first miles — or is it inches? — of our night,

so full of hollowness, so wild with rhetoric ....

Of The Ever-Changing Agitation In The Air

The man held his hands to his heart as

he danced.

He slacked and swirled.

The doorways of the little city

blurred. Something

leaked out,

kindling the doorframes up,

making each entranceway

less true.

And darkness gathered

although it does not fall . . . And the little dance,

swinging this human all down the alleyway,

nervous little theme pushing itself along,

braiding, rehearsing,

constantly incomplete so turning and tacking --

oh what is there to finish? -- his robes made

rustic by the reddish swirl,

which grows darker towards the end of the

avenue of course,

one hand on his chest,

one flung out to the side as he dances,

taps, sings,

on his scuttling toes, now humming a little,

now closing his eyes as he twirls, growing smaller,

why does the sun rise? remember me always

dear for I will

return --

liberty spooring in the evening air,

into which the lilacs open, the skirts uplift,

liberty and the blood-eye careening gently over

the giant earth,

and the cat in the doorway who does not

mistake the world,

eyeing the spots where the birds must

eventually land—

The Guardian Angel of the Little Utopia

Shall I move the flowers again?

Shall I put them further to the left

into the light?

Win that fix it, will that arrange the

thing?

Yellow sky.

Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.

As I approach, my footfall in the leaves

drowns out the cricket-chirping I was

coming close to hear.

Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.

Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.

But anyway I am indoors, of course, and this is a pane, here,

and I have arranged the flowers for you

again. Have taken the dead cordless ones, the yellow bits past apogee,

the faded cloth, the pollen-free abandoned marriage-hymn

back out, leaving the few crisp blooms to swagger, winglets, limpid

debris

Shall I arrange these few remaining flowers?

Shall I rearrange these gossamer efficiencies?

Please don't touch me with your skin.

Please let the thing evaporate.

Please tell me clearly what it is.

The party is so loud downstairs, bristling with souvenirs.

It's a philosophy of life, of course,

drinks fluorescent, whips of syntax in the air

above the heads -- how small they seem from here,

the bobbing universal heads, stuffing the void with eloquence,

and also tiny merciless darts

of truth. It's pulled on tight, the air they breathe and rip.

It's like a prize the way it's stretched on tight

over the voices, keeping them intermingling, forcing the breaths to

marry, marry,

cunning little hermeneutic cupola,

dome of occasion in which the thoughts re-

group, the footprints stall and gnaw in tiny ruts,

the napkins wave, are waved , the honeycombing

thoughts are felt to dialogue, a form of self-

congratulation, no?, or is it suffering? I'm a bit

dizzy up here rearranging things,

they will come up here soon, and need a setting for their fears,

and loves, an architecture for their evolutionary

morphic needs -- what will they need if I don't make the place? --

what will they know to miss?, what cry out for, what feel the bitter

restless irritations

for? A bit dizzy from the altitude of everlastingness,

the tireless altitudes of the created place,

in which to make a life -- a liberty -- the hollow, fetishized, and starry

place,

a bit gossamer with dream, a vortex of evaporations,

oh little dream, invisible city, invisible hill

I make here on the upper floors for you --

down there, where you are entertained, where you are passing

time, there's glass and moss on air,

there's the feeling of being numerous, mouths submitting to air, lips

to protocol,

and dreams of sense, tongues, hinges, forceps clicking

in anticipation ofas if the moment, freeze-burned by accuracies--of

could be thawed open into life again

by gladnesses, by rectitude -- no, no -- by the sinewy efforts at

sincerity -- can't you feel it gliding round you,

mutating, yielding the effort-filled phrases of your talk to air,

compounding, stemming them, honeying-open the sheerest

innuendoes till

the rightness seems to root, in the air, in the compact indoor sky,

and the rest, all round, feels like desert, falls away,

and you have the sensation of muscular timeliness,and you feel the calligraphic in you reach out like a soul

into the midst of others, in conversation,

gloved by desire, into the tiny carnage

of opinions. So dizzy. Life buzzing beneath me

though my feeling says the hive is gone, queen gone,

the continuum continuing beneath, busy, earnest, in con-

versation. Shall I prepare. Shall I put this further

to the left, shall I move the light, the point-of-view, the shades are

drawn, to cast a glow resembling disappearance, slightly red,

will that fix it, will that make clear the task, the trellised ongoingness

and all these tiny purposes, these parables, this marketplace

of tightening truths?

Oh knit me that am crumpled dust,

the heap is all dispersed. Knit me that am. Say therefore. Say

philosophy and mean by that the pane.

Let us look out again. The yellow sky.

With black leaves rearranging it

The Guardian Angel of the Private Life

All this was written on the next day's list.

On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,

pale but effective,

and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,

built-up its tiniest cathedral...

(Or is it the sum of what takes place? )

If I lean down, to whisper, to them,

down into their gravitational field, there where they head busily on

into the woods, laying the gifts out one by one, onto the path,

hoping to be on the air,

hoping to please the children --

(and some gifts overwrapped and some not wrapped at all) -- if

I stir the wintered ground-leaves

up from the paths, nimbly, into a sheet of sun,

into an escape-route-width of sun, mildly gelatinous where wet, though mostly

crisp,

fluffing them up a bit, and up, as if to choke the singularity of sun

with this jubilation of manyness, all through and round these passers-by --

just leaves, nothing that can vaporize into a thought,

no, a burning bush's worth of spidery, up-ratcheting, tender-cling leaves,

oh if -- the list gripped hard by the left hand of one,

the busyness buried so deep into the puffed-up greenish mind of one,

the hurried mind hovering over its rankings,

the heart -- there at the core of the drafting leaves -- wet and warm at the

zero of

the bright mock-stairwaying-up of the posthumous leaves -- the heart,

formulating its alleyways of discovery,

fussing about the integrity of the whole,

the heart trying to make time and place seem small,

sliding its slim tears into the deep wallet of each new event

on the list

then checking it off -- oh the satisfaction -- each check a small kiss,

an echo of the previous one, off off it goes the dry high-ceilinged

obligation,

checked-off by the fingertips, by the small gust called done that swipes

the unfinishable's gold hem aside, revealing

what might have been, peeling away what should . . .

There are flowerpots at their feet.

There is fortune-telling in the air they breathe.

It filters-in with its flashlight-beam, its holy-water-tinted air,

down into the open eyes, the lampblack open mouth.

Oh listen to these words I'm spitting out for you.

My distance from you makes them louder.

Are we all waiting for the phone to ring?

Who should it be? What fountain is expected to

thrash forth mysteries of morning joy? What quail-like giant tail of

promises, pleiades, psalters, plane-trees,

what parapets petalling-forth the invisible

into the world of things,

turning the list into its spatial-form at last,

into its archival many-headed, many-legged colony . . .

Oh look at you.

What is it you hold back? What piece of time is it the list

won't cover? You down there, in the theater of

operations -- you, throat of the world -- so diacritical --

(are we all waiting for the phone to ring?) --

(what will you say? are you home? are you expected soon?) --

oh wanderer back from break, all your attention focused

-- as if the thinking were an oar, this ship the last of some

original fleet, the captains gone but some of us

who saw the plan drawn-out

still here -- who saw the thinking clot-up in the bodies of the greater men,

who saw them sit in silence while the voices in the other room

lit-up with passion, itchings, dreams of landings,

while the solitary ones,

heads in their hands, so still,

the idea barely forming

at the base of that stillness,

the idea like a homesickness starting just to fold and pleat and knot-itself

out of the manyness -- the plan -- before it's thought,

before it's a done deal or the name-you're-known-by --

the men of x, the outcomes of y -- before --

the mind still gripped hard by the hands

that would hold the skull even stiller if they could,

that nothing distract, that nothing but the possible be let to filter

through,

the possible and then the finely filamented hope, the filigree,

without the distractions of wonder --

oh tiny golden spore just filtering-in to touch the good idea,

which taking-form begins to twist,

coursing for bottom-footing, palpating for edge-hold, limit,

now finally about to

rise, about to go into the other room -- and yet

not having done so yet, not yet -- the

intake -- before the credo, before the plan --

right at the homesickness -- before this list you hold

in your exhausted hand. Oh put it down.

The Surface

It has a hole in it. Not only where I

concentrate.

The river still ribboning, twisting up,

into its re-

arrangements, chill enlightenments, tight-knotted

quickenings

and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving

the messengers--

the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings.

glassy

forgettings under the river of

my attention--

and the river of my attention laying itself down--

bending,

reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy

obstacles--

and the surface rippling under the wind's attention--

rippling over the accumulations, the slowed-down drifting

permanences

of the cold

bed.

I say iridescent and I look down.

The leaves very still as they are carried.

Underneath (9)

SPRING

Up, up you go, you must be introduced.

You must learn belonging to (no-one)

Drenched in the white veil (day)

The circle of minutes pushed gleaming onto your finger.

Gaps pocking the brightness where you try to see in.

Missing: corners, fields,

completeness: holes growing in it where the eye looks hardest.

Below, his chest, a sacred weightless place

and the small weight of your open hand on it.

And these legs, look, still yours, after all you've done with them.

Explain the six missing seeds.

Explain muzzled.

Explain tongue breaks thin fire in eyes.

Learn what the great garden-(up, up you go)-exteriority, exhales:

the green never-the-less the green who-did-you-say-you-are

and how it seems to stare all the time, that green,

until night blinds it temporarily.

What is it searching for all the leaves turning towards you.

Breath the emptiest of the freedoms.

When will they notice the hole in your head (they won't).

When will they feel for the hole in your chest (never).

Up, go. Let being-seen drift over you again, sticky kindness.

Those wet strangely unstill eyes filling their heads-

thinking or sight?—

all waiting for the true story—

your heart, beating its little song: explain. . .

Explain requited

Explain indeed the blood of your lives I will require

explain the strange weight of meanwhile

and there exists another death in regards to which

we are not immortal

variegated dappled spangled intricately wrought

complicated obstruse subtle devious

scintillating with change and ambiguity

SUMMER

Explain two are

Explain not one

(in theory) (and in practice)

blurry, my love, like a right quotation,

wanting so to sink back down,

you washing me in soil now, my shoulders dust, my rippling dust,

Look I'll scrub the dirt listen.

Up here how will I

(not) hold you.

Where is the dirt packed in again around us between us obliterating difference

Must one leave off Explain edges

(tongue breaks) (thin fire)

(in eyes)

And bless. And blame.

(Moonless night.

Vase in the kitchen)

FALL

Explain duty to remain to the end.

Duty not to run away from the good.

The good.

(Beauty is not an issue.)

A wise man wants?

A master.

WINTER

Oh my beloved I speak of the absolute jewels.

Dwelling in place for example.

In fluted listenings.

In panting waters human-skinned to the horizon.

Muzzled the deep.

Fermenting the surface.

Wrecks left at the bottom, yes.

Space birdless.

Light on it a woman on her knees-her having kneeled everywhere already.

God's laughter unquenchable.

Back there its river ripped into pieces, length gone, buried in parts, in sand.

Believe me I speak now for the sand.

Here at the front end, the narrator.

At the front end, the meanwhile: God's laughter.

Are you still waiting for the true story? (God's laughter)

The difference between what is and could be? (God's laughter)

In this dance the people do not move.

Deferred defied obstructed hungry,

organized around a radiant absence.

In His dance the people do not move.

Woods

No one has died just now.
But that is only as far as I know.
As far as I know a breath can be contained
by a line. O stubborn appetite: I, then I,
loping through the poem. Shall I do that again?
Can we put our finger on it?
These lines have my breathing in them, yes.
Also my body was here. Why try to disguise it.
In this morning of my year
that will never be given back.
Also those who will not give it back. Whoever they
may be.

How quietly they do their job
over this page. How can I know when it's the
case—oh swagger of dwelling in place, in voice—
surely one of us understands the importance.
Understands? Shall I wave a "finished" copy at you
whispering do you wish to come for lunch.
Nor do I want to dwell on this.
I cannot, actually, dwell on this.
There is no home. One can stand out here
and gesture wildly, yes. One can say "finished"
and look at the woods. One can even, say,
look into the woods, as I do now, here,
but also casting my eye out

to see (although that was yesterday) (seeing in through the alleyways
of trees, the slantings of morninglight)
(speckling) (golden) laying in
these foliate patternings, this goldfinch, this
suddenly dipping through and rising to sit very still
on top of the nearest pine, big coin, puffed-out,
turning in little hops and hopes when he turns, sometimes
                                                                 entering full into
a beam of sun—becoming yellowest then—these line
                                                    endings
branching out too only so far
hoping for the light of an other's gaze to pan them,
as the gaze pans for gold in day, a day sometimes overcast,
                                                 but what
would the almost-gold (so that I can't
say "golden") bird be but your eye?
Do not harm him. I can bring him back,
and the way he hopped, turning, on the topmost spike
of the pine, how many minutes
ago was it I said "golden," and does he still linger there
turning chest into and out of the story, hot singular,
not able to shed light off himself yet so full
of my glance from this open window, me in relative
dark, running on something that cripples me,
do not harm him, do not touch him, don't probe
with the ghost your mind this future as it lays itself out
here, right over the day, straight from the font, and yes
I am afraid, and yes my fear is
flicking now from limb to limb, swooping once completely out of
sight—oh flickering long corridor—then
                                           back,
the whole wind-sluiced avenued continuum taking
my eye around in it—who could ever hold so many
thoughts in mind—here he is now, back, my fear,
—my mind gathering wildly up to still itself on him.

Covenant

She was being readied by forces she did not
recognize. This is an age in which imagination
is no longer all-powerful. Where if you had
to write the whole thing down, you could.
(Imagine: to see the whole thing written down.)
Everything but memory abolished.
All the necessary explanations also provided.
A very round place: everyone is doing it.
"It: a very round and glad place.
Feeling life come from far away, like a motor approaching.
And in its approach: that moment when it is closest, so loud, as if
not only near you, but in you.
And that being the place where the sensation of real property
begins. Come. It is going to pass, even though right
                                                                     now
it's very loud, here, alongside, life, life, so glad to be in it,
no?, unprotected, thank you, exactly the way I feel.
And you? Lord how close it comes. It has a
                                              seeming to it
so bright it is as if it had no core.
It all given over to the outline of seem:
still approaching, blind, open, its continuing elsewhere unthinkable as a
                                                                                        gear-shift
                                                                                        at this speed.
Approaching as if with a big question.
No other system but this one and it growing larger.
All at once, as if all the voices now are suddenly one voice.
Ah, it is here now, the here. [Love, where is love, can it too
be this thing that simply grows insistently louder]
[It seems impossible it could ever pass by][she thought]
the eruption of presentness right here: your veins
[Meanwhile a dream floats in an unvisited field]
[There by the edge of the barn, above the two green-lichened
stones, where for an instant a butterfly color of chicory
                                                         flicks, dis-
appears] How old-fashioned: distance: squinting it
                                                                   into
view. Even further: rocks at year's lowest tide.
The always-underneath excitedly exposed to heat, light, wind, the
being-seen. Who could have known a glance could be
so plastic. Rubbery and pushing down on all the tiny hissing overbright
                                                                                          greens.
O sweet conversation: protozoa, air: how long have you been speaking?
The engine [of the most] is passing now.
At peak: the mesmerization of here, this me here, this me
passing now.
So as to leave what behind?
We, who can now be neither wholly here nor disappear?
And to have it come so close and yet not know it:
how in time you do not move on:
how there is no "other" side:
how the instant is very wide and bright and we cannot
                                                                     ever
get away with it--the instant--what holds the "know"
[as if gently, friend, as if mesmerized by the love of it][love of
(not) making sense](tide coming in)(then distance taking
                                                        the perplexion
                                                        of engine
whitely in)(the covenant, the listening, drawing its parameters out
just as it approaches its own unraveling)
the covenant: yes: that there be plenitude, yes,
but only as a simultaneous emptying--of the before, where it came
from--and of the after (the eager place to which it so
"eagerly" goes). Such rigorous logic, that undulating shape
                                                          we make of
                                                          our listening
to it: being: being on time: in time: there seeming to be no actual
                                                                                being:
all of it growing for a time closer and closer--as with a freight
                                                                of sheer abstract
                                                                abundance (the motor
sound)(is all) followed by the full selfishness (of such
                                          well being) of the being
(so full of innocence) actually (for the instant) here:
I love you: the sky seems nearer: you are my first
                                                            person:
let no one question this tirelessness of approach:
love big enough to hide the cage:
tell them yourself who you are:
no victory: ever: no ever: then what "happens":
you can hear the hum at its most constant: steady: the era:
                              love bestowed upon love close-up:
(quick, ask it of heaven now, whatever it was you so
                                                         wished to
know) the knowing: so final: yet here is the road, the
                                             context, ongoingness,
and how it does go on regardless of the strangely sudden coming un-
                                                                                       done of
its passing away.
Silence is welcomed without enthusiasm.

Listening standing now like one who removed his hat
                                                      out of respect for
                                                      the passage.
What comes in the aftermath they tell us is richly
                                                   satisfying.
No need to make a story up, for instance.
We have been free now ever since, for instance.

In/Silence

I try to hold my lie in mind.
My thinking one thing while feeling another.
My being forced. Because the truth
is a thing one is not permitted to say.
That it is reserved for silence,
a buttress in silence's flyings, its motions
always away from source; that it is re-
served for going too, for a deeply
artifactual spidery form, and how it can, gleaming,
yet looking still like mere open air, mere light,
catch in its syntax the necessary sacrifice.
Oh whatever that might be. How for song
I looked today long and hard at a singing bird,
small as my hand, inches from me, seeming
to puff out and hold something within, something that
                                            makes
wind ruffle his exterior more--watched
him lift and twist a beak sunlight made burnt-silver
as he tossed it back--not so much to let
anything out but more to carve and then to place firmly in the
                                            listening space
                                            around him
a piece of inwardness: no visible
passaging-through: no inner complication and release:
no passage from an inner place--a mechanism
of strings, bone, hollow
chamber--no native immaterial quiver time turns material--
then towards [by mechanisms ancient and invisible] expression,
and the tragic of all upward motion--
then it all lost in the going aloft with the as yet
                                 unsung--then
the betrayal (into the clear morning air)
of the source of happiness into mere (sung) happiness.
Although there is between the two, just at the break
of silentness, a hovering, almost a penitent
                        hesitation, an
intake, naked, before any dazzling release
of the unfree into the seeming free, and it seems
it goes elsewhere, and the near (the engine) overruns
into the truly free. This till the last stars be counted?
This plus the mind's insistent coming back and coming back?
This up against that coming back. The death of
uncertainty. The song that falls upon the listener's eye,
that seeks the sleek minimum of the meaningless made.
Here in the morning light. In matter's massive/muscular/venerable holding-in
of all this flow. Next door the roses flow.
Blood in the hand that reaches for them flows.

Soldatenfriedhof

(German Cemetery, La Cambe, Normandy, 2003,Computer Terminal)

"To find a fallen person," it says, "push green key."
Fill in name, last name, first name, I put in
Klein. 210 Kleins in the Soldatenfriedhof.
I scroll. Klein stays the same.
The first name changes, rank, row, plot.
No. The graveyard changes too. At 88 Klein's in
Colleville (U.S. graveyard). At 93 he's in the British one (Bayeux).
Have you found your fallen person says the program
when I go back to the home page. No slot for
nationality. None for religion. Just date of
                            birth.
Then rank, row, plot, and field come forth. I'm staring at
                                   the soundless
screen. Keys very large for easy use.
Back through the doorway there's the
field. 21,222 German soldiers. Some named, some not.
Inside the office now a wide face looking up.
When is the last time a new man was found, I ask.
Here it is full, he says, people now go to Saint Andre.
So there are no new bodies being found?
Oh no. No, no. Just last month eight--
here look, pulling a red file from a stack.
Look--and it's open--here, you'll see.
A name, a question mark, a print of teeth of which two
(lost after death) marked "lost after death." A plastic
baggie holds an oval metal tag, almost

illegible, now placed into
my hand. The other baggie he snaps open: here:
a button: we mostly tell them from the buttons:
this was a paratrooper: you can see from
the size, the color of the casing. The sleeve
of something other than time, I think,
slides open to reveal, nested, as in a pod, this seed, hard, dark, how does he
                                                 make out its
identity--a paratrooper--a German one--each people's
buttons different--if it's a German, we get called--if he is ours
we begin work--whatever clothing still exists--part of
                                         a boot,
a lace, can get you back
the person--a metal clip--the stitching of a kind of
cloth. There were so many more kinds of fiber then. Then
as much soil as we can get--bone-fragments when there are--
how fast flesh turns to soil again--that is why clothing is
                                       so good.
Where there are teeth too it is good--
we will be able to notify the family.
There is great peace in knowing your person is found.
Mostly in Spring when the land is plowed.
Sometimes when they widen roads.
Many were put in with the apple trees.
One feels, from the way they are placed, the burying
was filled with kindness. I don't really know why, but it is
so. I turn the oval in my hand. Soil on it still, inside the chiseled number-
                                                 group, deeper
in the 3's and 8's, so that it's harder to make out the whole.
The boy is 17 he says.
What if he hadn't been found.
What if he is now found.
What does he re-enter.
Champigny Saint Andre will receive
some earth, jaw, teeth, buttons, dogtag, an
insignia, hair, bones of most of one
right hand. When more than one have been found
together, the official of the graves registration department
--this man with soft large hands holding the folder out--
portions out enough human remains
to make up as many people as possible.
The possible person: a tooth is enough. Anything
will do really, he says looking up, almost inaudibly.
With whom is he pleading.
Behind him now the field where in '47 American bodies, and parts-of,
                                                    put here
                                                    temporarily,
were dug up and moved for the last time
to their final resting place at the American Normandy War Memorial--
and these available German parts and wholes pulled from their
holding grounds and placed in openings Americans
                                   released.
Forgive me says the man still in his seat,
I have been rude, I did not mean (gets up)
my name is ______, here is my card.
May I hold the button a moment longer?
You from under the apple orchard,
you still not found in my field
and the mole hacking through,
and the rabbits at dawn eating,
and the bird I cannot identify,
you, meaninglessness,
speak out--what do you hate--what do you hate--

Physician

My person is sick. It trembles. They have looked everywhere
in my body for a cause, oh my body is brilliant. Forgive my brilliant body, 
                                                          dear
gods, whatever hallway you have strayed down--maybe even answering
a house call? Maybe finding your way out? I agree
the layout is growing increasingly complicated. Not one exit is
marked. It must feel to you like a horrible labyrinth, this
history of ours. No
opening. And all our walls! Everywhere crammed full of the crushed
and confused and still-milling numberless angels.
Everywhere in the solids of our world them rushing towards each other.
As there is nowhere else for them to rush towards.
Even in my room, in my walls, right there, deep inside them,
something filled with greatest passion, thickening folds of it, is
                            personally embracing
                            a void.
My person, ah, America, sinks into its bed.
Into the brooding.
All day long reads only the Physicians' Desk
Reference. To find out what is wrong. Has all
the symptoms. Is not mad. Wants to tell you,
read carefully, you will find you have them
too. This takes a while, but after a while, you will find yourself
shuddering into your diagnosis. It's like having inside you
numberless confused angels. At evening my person
                        looks briefly out of
the upstairs window, just before the light goes,
over the stony valley, where the hawk always sweeps round
the left end of the field. That is YOUR field my person says under its
breath, and the hawk knows it, and the disease knows it,
and the summer which is very far away and which might never
come back knows it, even the steps out the front door
which might never again give of their service
to my person know it. Your field, yours, it says
although this time only with its eyes, as the room stuffed full of angels is
                                                           best
kept silent. My person loves history. It loves the great battles which make 
                                                           it weep
as it lies in bed remembering. It wants to remember all of them.
What did we look like then? The bugle boy
enters into the room, shyness in him, then the note
is sounded. A crowd of horses tries to turn around in
the small room--the bed in their way--the nightlights
confusing. Their riders have a hard time holding.
Where the hell are they? IN MY BODY'S HEART.
Formation for battle, first assault--it is not easy in a small space
such as a mind or a bedroom. Memory is a much larger space of course
but these armies are not in there, they are in
here. Will you not help me at least with this, you
powers. The Pythian Goddess once sat here, fumes rising from her into
                                                 the
early dawn. My person had fallen into a moment's rest so was sleeping
and missed her. So how do I know this? At any rate it is the bloody shiny
campaigns I need to watch--one by one, in greatest detail--
run through their course, over all
the continents, through every one of the centuries.
There was a time when there were no centuries.
It is what began with them my person needs to review.
There is not much time and it needs to do it all.
The sickness: new doctors come every day, I send them
away. I read the desk reference. I am on page 293.
You can see it open here, and all the underlining.
The disease is not as bad as the remedies. I try
them all. I will try them all till it is over.
How do I tell my person it is not my body that is ill.
Not my body, not me, that is right. To be sure, there is
terminal personal illness, but this is not personal, there is no longer
personal illness. No. It is something else.
Outside: seasons, what is left of them, a household, what is
said and done, ashes cleaned up again, a new fire set, bread, promises
called-out from one room to another, solid floors,
and then motion, motion all day long,
its miraculous invisible millions of paths
all over everything. That is that says my body. Then there's this--my 
                                                         telling
to you, the me in me, the multiplication of persons, out of control....
What will my body do when the book is all read.
It will have had them all, the possible illnesses.
It will ask for others. The unknown ones.
That their symptoms be listed and brought to it.
It trembles. It is trembling. It will look back on even this with a memory
of devastating joy.

Passenger

Where are you from. I have never been there. Why
did you leave. Excuse me. I cannot hear you. Because
of the partition. Is there some way you could lower
the partition. Where is your country. How many family
did you leave behind. Behind--is that what you would call
your country. Was it worth it. I can't imagine
what you have seen. Your desert your mountains your
endless blue rivers. Blue rivers. Your dirt cities. Your, your--oh what
is it, I have seen it in pictures, or things like it.
But your country. Your tiny piece of
country. Do you regret. I always ask you this. You keep on
changing there in the front seat driving me to my
destination. The destination changes. But the
movement is the same. You are making [not enough] money.
Not enough. You are on the phone, or your country's
radio is blasting. Over your new country your old country's radio.
Or you are stoned. Or you are very angry. Scores fly
through the small space between us. Someone is wrong.
That is one firm truth. But you see I cannot
do any right thing here any longer. I can think and
out-think and so on. But we're at the gates of
Judgment and you are still driving I am still the passenger.
We could change places. You see of course it's only on this page
we can do that. I will be the one who is
sleeping when I as a passenger arrive at the stand and knock at the front
window, or simply open the back door. Wake up. I will be the one
abruptly awakened. I will be sorry to awaken you. I will say you
didn't wake me I wasn't sleeping. I will say o.k. You
will say I was just thinking. I will say of what. We are
now pulling away from the curb. I will say I was thinking of
my country. I count out my money again. I use this word enough.
We are approaching the destination. I am afraid.
I am afraid I will not be able to handle your suffering.
But that is a lie. You are so far away now from
your country--you have had to give up something so great
[God only knows what][I don't know what] for money,
I mean let's face it, for money to send home, yes, and then
to get all the stuff--not very much it is true but they make
you feel it is always almost enough. Also you are scared
[therefore the flags on your windows][one in the car itself].
Scared they will say you did IT. Or could have. I
am also scared. Am I driving now? It is not clear here.
There were supposed to be instructions. Stage directions.
Or signs from the deities, but they have moved on. There
must be an other place I think sometimes. For them to have
moved on to. The Apocalypse? That is a common
destination spot for many human minds now. The
rapid swallowing of all we made. The bird's eye view we're
so in love with. Ah. Is this town empty? We keep on
driving. You, you who have come here abandoning what you
should not have abandoned (we both know this), what
cordless thing thundering with gold were you imagining when you boarded
                                                       your bus
                                                       away
fast, lake in the distance? The heroic wanderings of your
                              own past people,
what have they come down to here, you glowingly immersed in cablight,
in the jagged sums you take home to make
ends meet. In the humming exchange rates for what you send
home. Do you love them still? Here I see your eyes in the rear
view. Ah. How many names can you name. Of people who are
true Americans. The flags plastered on this vehicle block my view
everywhere. How many will cover for you. How many names have
you changed. Have you attended to your outfit.
Do you sing it well, the god-sanctioned anthem. Are you
fluent in this one-god's country. I know your country also has
one god but read the fine print he is not the
same as ours. "Ours." How does one peel this sticky
nationhood off. The vehicle keeps moving I can only be its
good passenger. You shut your eyes. You slumber and watch
                                   the suburbs go
by. You tilt your glance to an aesthetic point of view. You shepherd
                                                all the
interesting details. You "learn" how "others" live. Ah. End of the
Republic. How your outskirts flow by on this way away
from you. Your poor trapped immigrant driving your un-
imaginable sums around in his heart. Your balance sheet the road
to him. His balance sheet enough to make you fear if you
still fear. Goodbye. Fearlessness of the American.
How you are hated. Everywhere. Goodbye.