The dead bird, color of a bruise,
and smaller than an eye
swollen shut,
is king among omens.

Who can blame the ants for feasting?

Let him cast the first crumb.

~

We once tended the oracles.

Now we rely on a photograph

a fingerprint
a hand we never saw

coming.

~

A man draws a chalk outline
first in his mind

around nothing

then around the body
of another man.

He does this without thinking.

~

What can I do about the white room I left
behind? What can I do about the great stones

I walk among now? What can I do

but sing.

Even a small cut can sing all day.

~

There are entire nights

                                I would take back.

Nostalgia is a thin moon,
                                                              disappearing

into a sky like cold,
                                          unfeeling iron.

~

I dreamed

you were a drowned man, crown
of phosphorescent, seaweed in your hair,

water in your shoes. I woke up desperate

for air.

~

In another dream, I was a field

and you combed through me
searching for something

you only thought you had lost.

~

What have we left at the altar of sorrow?

What blessed thing will we leave tomorrow?

When the leaves, by thousands thinned,
A thousand times have whirled in the wind,
And the moon, with hollow cheek,
Staring from her hollow height,
Consolation seems to seek
From the dim, reechoing night;
And the fog-streaks dead and white
Lie like ghosts of lost delight
O’er highest earth and lowest sky;
Then, Autumn, work thy witchery!

Strew the ground with poppy-seeds,
And let my bed be hung with weeds,
Growing gaunt and rank and tall,
Drooping o’er me like a pall.
Send thy stealthy, white-eyed mist
Across my brow to turn and twist
Fold on fold, and leave me blind
To all save visions in the mind.
Then, in the depth of rain-fed streams
I shall slumber, and in dreams
Slide through some long glen that burns
With a crust of blood-red ferns
And brown-withered wings of brake
Like a burning lava-lake;—
So, urged to fearful, faster flow
By the awful gasp, “Hahk! hahk!” of the crow,
Shall pass by many a haunted rood
Of the nutty, odorous wood;
Or, where the hemlocks lean and loom,
Shall fill my heart with bitter gloom;
Till, lured by light, reflected cloud,
I burst aloft my watery shroud,
And upward through the ether sail
Far above the shrill wind’s wail;—
But, falling thence, my soul involve
With the dust dead flowers dissolve;
And, gliding out at last to sea,
Lulled to a long tranquillity,
The perfect poise of seasons keep
With the tides that rest at neap.
So must be fulfilled the rite
That giveth me the dead year's might;
And at dawn I shall arise
A spirit, though with human eyes,
A human form and human face;
And where’er I go or stay,
There the summer’s perished grace
Shall be with me, night and day.

‘There’s a footstep coming: look out and see,’
     ‘The leaves are falling, the wind is calling;
No one cometh across the lea.’—

‘There’s a footstep coming: O sister, look.’—
     ‘The ripple flashes, the white foam dashes;
No one cometh across the brook.’—

‘But he promised that he would come:
     To-night, to-morrow, in joy or sorrow,
He must keep his word, and must come home.

‘For he promised that he would come:
     His word was given; from earth or heaven,
He must keep his word, and must come home.

‘Go to sleep, my sweet sister Jane;
     You can slumber, who need not number
Hour after hour, in doubt and pain.

‘I shall sit here awhile, and watch;
     Listening, hoping, for one hand groping
In deep shadow to find the latch.’

After the dark, and before the light,
     One lay sleeping; and one sat weeping,
Who had watched and wept the weary night.

After the night, and before the day,
     One lay sleeping; and one sat weeping—
Watching, weeping for one away.

There came a footstep climbing the stair;
     Some one standing out on the landing
Shook the door like a puff of air—

Shook the door, and in he passed.
     Did he enter? In the room centre
Stood her husband: the door shut fast.

‘O Robin, but you are cold—
     Chilled with the night-dew: so lily-white you
Look like a stray lamb from our fold.

‘O Robin, but you are late:
     Come and sit near me—sit here and cheer me.’—
(Blue the flame burnt in the grate.)

‘Lay not down your head on my breast:
     I cannot hold you, kind wife, nor fold you
In the shelter that you love best.

‘Feel not after my clasping hand:
     I am but a shadow, come from the meadow
Where many lie, but no tree can stand.

‘We are trees which have shed their leaves:
     Our heads lie low there, but no tears flow there;
Only I grieve for my wife who grieves.

‘I could rest if you would not moan
     Hour after hour; I have no power
To shut my ears where I lie alone.

‘I could rest if you would not cry;
     But there’s no sleeping while you sit weeping—
Watching, weeping so bitterly.’—

‘Woe’s me! woe’s me! for this I have heard.
     Oh, night of sorrow!—oh, black to-morrow!
Is it thus that you keep your word?

‘O you who used so to shelter me
     Warm from the least wind—why, now the east wind
Is warmer than you, whom I quake to see.

‘O my husband of flesh and blood,
     For whom my mother I left, and brother,
And all I had, accounting it good,

‘What do you do there, underground,
     In the dark hollow? I’m fain to follow.
What do you do there?—what have you found?’—

‘What I do there I must not tell:
     But I have plenty: kind wife, content ye:
It is well with us—it is well.

‘Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,
With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,
And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea,
And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?’

‘From the other world I come back to you:
My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew,
You know the old, whilst I know the new:
But to-morrow you shall know this too.’

‘Oh not to-morrow into the dark, I pray;
Oh not to-morrow, too soon to go away:
Here I feel warm and well-content and gay:
Give me another year, another day.’

‘Am I so changed in a day and a night
That mine own only love shrinks from me with fright,
Is fain to turn away to left or right
And cover up his eyes from the sight?’

‘Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend,
I loved you for life, but life has an end;
Through sickness I was ready to tend:
But death mars all, which we cannot mend.

‘Indeed I loved you; I love you yet,
If you will stay where your bed is set,
Where I have planted a violet,
Which the wind waves, which the dew makes wet.’

‘Life is gone, then love too is gone,
It was a reed that I leant upon:
Never doubt I will leave you alone
And not wake you rattling bone with bone.

‘I go home alone to my bed,
Dug deep at the foot and deep at the head,
Roofed in with a load of lead,
Warm enough for the forgotten dead.

‘But why did your tears soak through the clay,
And why did your sobs wake me where I lay?
I was away, far enough away:
Let me sleep now till the Judgment Day.’

A zombie is a head
with a hole in it.

Layers of plastic,
putty, and crust.

The mindless
must be sated.

Mottled men who will
always return

          mouthing wet                          
          promises.                                  

You rise already
harmed and follow

          my sad circle

as if dancing
on shattered legs.

Shoeless, toeless,
such tender absences.

You come to me
ripped

          in linens and reds,

eternal, autumnal
with rust and wonder.

My servant, sublimate
and I am yours

(the hot death
we would give each other).

My dark ardor,
my dark augur.

Love to the very open-
mouthed end.

We are made of
so much hunger.

The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad,
     And so is the cat-a-mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
     And the frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play,
     The spindle is now a turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,
     But all the sky is a-burning:

The ditch is made, and our nails the spade,
With pictures full, of wax and of wool;
Their livers I stick, with needles quick;
There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood.
     Quickly, Dame, then bring your part in,
     Spur, spur upon little Martin,
     Merrily, merrily, make him fail,
     A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail,
     Fire above, and fire below,
     With a whip in your hand, to make him go.

When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead 
         And that thou think’st thee free 
From all solicitation from me, 
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, 
And thee, feign’d vestal, in worse arms shall see; 
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, 
And he, whose thou art then, being tir’d before, 
Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think 
         Thou call’st for more, 
And in false sleep will from thee shrink; 
And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou 
Bath’d in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie 
         A verier ghost than I. 
What I will say, I will not tell thee now, 
Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent, 
I’had rather thou shouldst painfully repent, 
Than by my threat’nings rest still innocent.