Gaza has become a funeral home, 
but there are no seats, 
no mourners, no bodies. 
In the caskets are nothing but 
what remained of the dead’s clothes, 
and on the crumbling walls are clocks 
that have not moved for fourteen months.

Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—
No, no, not that,—it's bad to think of war,
When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you're as right as rain….
                                     Why won't it rain?…
I wish there'd be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.

Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,—
Not people killed in battle,—they're in France,—
But horrible shapes in shrouds—old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

* * *

You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You'd never think there was a bloody war on!…
O yes, you would … why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft … they never cease—
Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop—I'm going crazy;
I'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
    I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It’s dusk on a Tuesday in June. A hot wind

       bears down and east. In my room, a stranger’s

hairclip lies like a gilded insect beside the sink.

       Hours later, it’s still dusk; it will be dusk all night.

Last month, I cut the masking tape from a box my mother left

       my sister and me. On the lid, she wrote, Life is hard, not

unbeatable. If I can do it, darlings, so can you. 2 am. A rosy dark

       dusting the window, the heat a ladder into sleep.

and you used to be The Richard Bey Show 
and my sister’s spaghetti. Under a friar plum tree, 
a simplified reading of “The Argonautica.”
You kept me full and entertained. I was that kind 
of round child. Gorging on what was left over. 
I didn’t want a real burden, my own ship or story. 
I didn’t want to go on ahead. I didn’t want to 
have to reverse into you. Into your apparatus. 
I never wanted nostalgia. We used to know each other,
remember? Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. 
Not. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry. Humid. Dry.
Why did we have to pry open our patch of dirt? 
Why couldn’t you always be acid wash
or those I CAN’T DRIVE 55 posters at the swap meet 
or sunglasses. I never wanted to lay questions around 
you. What if he takes another this year? What if 
he’s difficult to talk my way out of? What if he eats me 
only half-alive? What if all he is in his beach bum
orange is ghosts clothespinned to the laundry line?

Or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
    A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw;
    It was an Abyssinian maid,
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
    Could I revive within me
    Her symphony and song,
    To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
    Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
    And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
    Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
    We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
    When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
    To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
    The shaft we raise to them and thee.

My grandmother kisses
as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,
where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes
through the kitchen window,
as if somewhere, a body is falling apart
and flames are making their way back
through the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh,
as if to walk out the door, your torso
would dance from exit wounds.
When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent is relearned
and your sweat pearls into drops of gold
inside her lungs, as if while she holds you
death also, is clutching your wrist.
My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere
a body is still
falling apart.

Praise the Ocean for teaching me that home is not location as much as it is
belonging where I am wanted 

Praise the Ocean for always wanting me 
for washing my body in and naming it child 

Praise the way the water bites at my ankles 
but never breaks the skin 

Praise the skin on my ankle that had to break for the gun for the tatau drawn by
the gun’s mouth in the hands 

of a tufuga during my first tatau appointment 
on island when I was 17 years old 

Praise his cigarette break  
so I could complete my sobbing in peace. 

Praise the umu, the underground oven of hot rocks and fire cooking the sweet coconut milk in the center of salted leaves for palusami 

for the thick talo and soft fattiness of octopus tentacles 
Praise the crinkled crack of metal on the edge of every can of tuna 

greasy from oiled chunks of fish, peppered over a bowl of hot rice Praise the ground as dining room table 

as only place to eat 
at eating at the feet of our elders as the talking chief blessed us in prayer 

Praise the mother mosquito and her obsession with the back of my legs Praise the stench of repellant that stuck to my skin like boobie trap 

like tourist trick 
like 2nd generation 

like “not quite from here” 
Praise the heavenly scorch of heat behind my ears 

Praise the lowered heads and crossed legs atop each woven fala mat Praise the village of women who wove them 

the mulberry bark that was beaten enough to braid 
Praise the broken flip flops running alongside flattened frogs

on the road headed towards the church house
Praise the choir of children 

who sing with one tongue. 
Praise the way we lay our dead to rest in front of each house 

how there is no need for cemeteries 
if our kin never really die 

Praise the way they return home to us 
Praise home 

Praise us.

There is this ringing hum  this
bullet-borne language  ringing
shell-fall and static this  late-night
ringing of threadwork and carpet  ringing
hiss and steam  this wing-beat
of rotors and tanks  broken
bodies ringing in steel  humming these
voices of dust  these years ringing
rifles in Babylon  rifles in Sumer
ringing these children their gravestones
and candy  their limbs gone missing  their
static-borne television  their ringing
this eardrum  this rifled symphonic  this
ringing of midnight in gunpowder and oil this
brake pad gone useless  this muzzle-flash singing  this
threading of bullets in muscle and bone  this ringing
hum  this ringing hum  this
ringing

Listen. The wind is still,

And far away in the night—

See!  The uplands fill 

With a running light. 

Open the doors.  It is warm;

And where the sky was clear —

Look!  The head of a storm

That marches here!

Come under the trembling hedge—

Fast, although you fumble. . . . 

There!  Did you hear the edge

Of winter crumble?

My spirit is too weak—mortality
   Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
   And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
   Yet ‘tis a gentle luxury to weep,
   That I have not the cloudy winds to keep,
Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
   Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
   That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time—with a billowy main—
   A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.

            on Gustav Klimt’s painting, 1907-1908

Do you really think if you bend

me, I will love you? You

crack my chin up, your hands

brown pigeons scheming reunion

at my cheek and temple, your jaw

cragged at the end of your thick neck

of longing. I claw onto you

as the only tree here, your

swing. I’m mad for gravity though

I’m bound, diagonally, to

you. Let me. Push from your trunk towards

the edge and my freedom. Leave me

to wither while moss weeps

in the corners, our halo liquid

as yolk, waving from our bodies’ heat,

our divinity melting. My dress

blossoms loudly. You are still

wrestling me closer. If only I could

release to you my mouth just this

once and you would leave me,

but the shadows of your robe are

so haphazard. I know you will try

to smother me again. The poppies scratch. My feet

reach beyond spring.

^{Unfortunately drowned in the River Avon, near Bath, October 15, 1743}

Why dash the floods! What cries my soul affright!
How steep the precipice! How dark the night!
Then Virtue sunk in Avon’s fatal wave,
No friend to succour, no kind hand to save; 
The circling waters hide his sinking head,
The treach’rous bottom forms his oozy bed. 
Behold the bloated corpse, the visage pale; 
See here what virtue, wealth, and birth avail.
What now remains beneath this load of pain?
To weep is nature, but to weep is vain.
What now remains? It yet remains to try 
What hope, what peace, religion can supply: 
It yet remains to catch the parting ray,
To note his worth ere mem’ry fade away,
To mark how various excellence combin’d, 
Recount his virtues, and transcribe his mind. 
It yet remains with holy rites to lay,
The breathless reliques in their kindred day.
Ye wise, ye good, the holy rites attend,
Here lies the wise man’s guide, the good man’s friend.
Awhile let faith exalt th’ adoring eye, 
And meditation deep suspend the sigh;
Then close the grave, and sound the fun’ral knell,
Each drop a tear, and take a last farewell; 
In peace retire, and wish to live as well.

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.