The saddest day will have an eve,
     The darkest night, a morn;
Think not, when clouds are thick and dark,
     Thy way is too forlorn.

For ev’ry cloud that e’er did rise,
     To shade thy life’s bright way,
And ev’ry restless night of pain,
     And ev’ry weary day,

Will bring thee gifts, thou’lt value more,
     Because they cost so dear;
The soul that faints not in the storm,
     Emerges bright and clear.

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have 
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

Though bleak these woods, and damp the ground
   With fallen leaves so thickly strown,
And cold the wind that wanders round
   With wild and melancholy moan;

There is a friendly roof I know,
   Might shield me from the wintry blast;
There is a fire, whose ruddy glow
   Will cheer me for my wanderings past.

And so, though still, where’er I go,
   Cold stranger-glances meet my eye;
Though, when my spirit sinks in woe,
   Unheeded swells the unbidden sigh;

Though solitude, endured too long,
   Bids youthful joys too soon decay,
Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue,
   And overclouds my noon of day;

When kindly thoughts that would have way,
   Flow back discouraged to my breast;
I know there is, though far away,
   A home where heart and soul may rest.

Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine,
   The warmer heart will not belie;
While mirth, and truth, and friendship shine
   In smiling lip and earnest eye.

The ice that gathers round my heart
   May there be thawed; and sweetly, then,
The joys of youth, that now depart,
   Will come to cheer my soul again.

Though far I roam, that thought shall be
   My hope, my comfort, everywhere;
While such a home remains to me,
   My heart shall never know despair!

A rose has thorns as well as honey,
I’ll not have her for love or money;
An iris grows so straight and fine,
That she shall be no friend of mine;
Snowdrops like the snow would chill me;
Nightshade would caress and kill me;
Crocus like a spear would fright me;
Dragon’s-mouth might bark or bite me;
Convolvulus but blooms to die;
A wind-flower suggests a sigh;
Love-lies-bleeding makes me sad;
And poppy-juice would drive me mad:—
But give me holly, bold and jolly,
Honest, prickly, shining holly;
Pluck me holly leaf and berry
For the day when I make merry.

Once in a dream (for once I dreamed of you)
    We stood together in an open field;
    Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled, 
Sporting at east and courting full in view:—
When loftier still a broadening darkness flew, 
    Down-swooping, and a ravenous hawk revealed;
    Too weak to fight, too fond to fly, they yield;
So farewell life and love and pleasures new. 
Then as their plumes fell fluttering to the ground, 
    Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops, 
        I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep:
    But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops 
Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound
        Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs and sheep. 

The half moon shows a face of plaintive sweetness
     Ready and poised to wax or wane;
A fire of pale desire in incompleteness,
       Tending to pleasure or to pain:—
Lo, while we gaze she rolleth on in fleetness
     To perfect loss or perfect gain.
Half bitterness we know, we know half sweetness;
     This world is all on wax, on wane:
When shall completeness round time’s incompleteness,
      Fulfilling joy, fulfilling pain?—
Lo, while we ask, life rolleth on in fleetness
    To finished loss or finished gain.

Oh, drink thou deep of the purple wine,
        And it’s hey for love, for I love you so!
Oh, clasp me close, with your lips on mine,
        And it’s hey for love, for I love you so!
The sea lies violet, deep, and wide,
My heart beats high with the rushing tide;
Was it fancy, beloved, the seagulls cried:
        “Sing loud for love, for I love him so”?

Oh, little boat for tossing wave,
        Sing loud for love, for I love him so!
Oh, y’all pine tree in the shadows grave,
        Sing loud for love, for I love him so!
The little waves kiss the gleaming sand,
I laugh in the sun on the joyful land;
Beloved, one clasp of your strong young hand;
        The world is fair, for I love you so!

A lover whom duty called over the wave,
With himself communed: "Will my love be true
If left to herself? Had I better not sue
Some friend to watch over her, good and grave?
But my friend might fail in my need," he said,
"And I return to find love dead.
Since friendships fade like the flow'rs of June,
I will leave her in charge of the stable moon."

Then he said to the moon: "O dear old moon,
Who for years and years from thy throne above
Hast nurtured and guarded young lovers and love,
My heart has but come to its waiting June,
And the promise time of the budding vine;
Oh, guard thee well this love of mine."
And he harked him then while all was still,
And the pale moon answered and said, 'I will.'

And he sailed in his ship o'er many seas,
And he wandered wide o'er strange far strands:
in isles of the south and in Orient lands,
Where pestilence lurks in the breath of the breeze.
But his star was high, so he braved the main,
And sailed him blithely home again;
And with joy he bended his footsteps soon
To learn of his love from the matron moon.

She sat as of yore, in her olden place,
Serene as death, in her silver chair.
A white rose gleamed in her whiter hair,
And the tint of a blush was on her face.
At sight of the youth she sadly bowed
And hid her face 'neath a gracious cloud.
She faltered faint on the night's dim marge,
But "How," spoke the youth, "have you kept your charge?"

The moon was sad at a trust ill-kept;
The blush went out in her blanching cheek,
And her voice was timid and low and weak,
As she made her plea and sighed and wept.
'Oh, another prayed and another plead,
And I couldn't resist," she answering said;
"But love still grows in the hearts of men:
Go forth, dear youth, and love again."

But he turned him away from her proffered grace.
"Thou art false, O moon, as the hearts of men,
I will not, will not love again."
And he turned sheer 'round with a soul-sick face
To the sea, and cried: "Sea, curse the moon,
Who makes her vows and forgets so soon."
And the awful sea with anger stirred,
And his breast heaved hard as he lay and heard.

And ever the moon wept down in rain,
And ever her sighs rose high in wind;
But the earth and sea were deaf and blind,
And she wept and sighed her griefs in vain.
And ever at night, when the storm is fierce,
The cries of a wraith through the thunders pierce;
And the waves strain their awful hands on high
To tear the false moon from the sky.

     THOU wast all that to me, love,
         For which my soul did pine—
     A green isle in the sea, love,
         A fountain and a shrine,
     All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
         And all the flowers were mine.

     Ah, dream too bright to last!
         Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
     But to be overcast!
         A voice from out the Future cries,
     “On! on!”—but o’er the Past
         (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
     Mute, motionless, aghast!

     For, alas! alas! with me
         The light of Life is o’er!
         No more—no more—no more—
     (Such language holds the solemn sea
         To the sands upon the shore)
     Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
         Or the stricken eagle soar!

     And all my days are trances,
         And all my nightly dreams
     Are where thy dark eye glances,
         And where thy footstep gleams—
     In what ethereal dances,
         By what eternal streams.

^{translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori}

Let’s love each other,
let’s cherish each other, my friend,
before we lose each other.

You’ll long for me when I’m gone.
You’ll make a truce with me.
So why put me on trial while I’m alive?

Why adore the dead but battle the living?

You’ll kiss the headstone of my grave.
Look, I’m lying here still as a corpse,
dead as a stone. Kiss my face instead!

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.’

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on.

A few small sails, barely moving,
dot Fidalgo Bay. As the sun burns away
the last pale clouds, a confluence
of robins descends to explore
my neighbor’s garden—
brown grass, muddy beds and the last
fading roses of the year.

It is September, the end of summer.
My backyard maples turning orange
and red and gold. From my high window,
the great mountain looks
painted on the horizon line,
small mountains at its feet, then
headlands and the Salish Sea below.

I can read no more today
about the agonies of this world,
its desperate refugees, the men
of arms and gold whose death tolls
are as numberless as the stars.
I’ve grown weary, impatient,
as I’ve grown old.

After this morning’s rain, I dream
only of a woman’s gentle laughter,
her fingers on my arm as we sip wine
in the evening, telling tales,
lighting the heart’s small fires
that will get us through the rains
of autumn and dark winter.

Alone at my window, I watch
a silent world and find it
welcome, my own silence welcome.
Longing has its own quiet place
in the human heart, but love
is sometimes rapturous, noisy,
almost uncivilized, and knows
no boundaries, no borders.

And what am I but its solitary
pilgrim—lost, found, lost again—
on the long journey whose only end
is silence before the burning
of my body, one last moment
of flame, a whiff of smoke
washed clean
and gone with the rain.

What do I care for morning,
For a shivering aspen tree,
For sun flowers and sumac
Opening greedily?
What do I care for morning,
For the glare of the rising sun,
For a sparrow’s noisy prating,
For another day begun?
Give me the beauty of evening,
The cool consummation of night,
And the moon like a love-sick lady,
Listless and wan and white.
Give me a little valley
Huddled beside a hill,
Like a monk in a monastery,
Safe and contented and still,
Give me the white road glistening,
A strand of the pale moon’s hair,
And the tall hemlocks towering
Dark as the moon is fair.
Oh what do I care for morning,
Naked and newly born—
Night is here, yielding and tender—
What do I care for dawn!

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Sudden cold or the sudden sense of having been cold for a long time

He said he was getting back some things that had been lost like what

Love oh great looking out across the river he wouldn’t meet my eyes either

Something flashed up and fell back down into the water there look no

I told him about the time I saw them feeding the crowd up out

Of the dark water of paler mouths opening closing like what

Getting the strength to say lost he was beautiful the play

Of that muscle I make you tense don’t I just under the tan skin of his jaw

I keep coming back to the surface that river your wrist I must have

Pressing my mouth I can’t look at your hands thinking of how you

Touched me hurt you a lot love like what those memories

Saying you’re wearing mallard colors after I chased to frighten

For no reason the ducks because I can’t stand still enough if I could

I would be so still you would think I would never hurt you

Screaming what was her last name what was her name

The wind-scarred surface of the water

What I'm not allowed to feel what I’m not allowed to say pressing up

As though feeding my heart is everywhere under my skin

And rising up to the surface of the water clenching and unclenching

The thick grey muscle the dense shoal of fish brought to just beneath

The surface the grotesque bouquet of their rapidly blossoming and

Shutting the crowd but as if behind glass so there was no sound

Of people screaming I feel helpless and cold saying please believe

I did not mean to hurt you you could say that to me too in Orphée

The poet presses against the mirror which wavers like water which lets him in

And if my heart be scarred and burned, 
The safer, I, for all I learned; 
The calmer, I, to see it true 
That ways of love are never new— 
The love that sets you daft and dazed 
Is every love that ever blazed; 
The happier, I, to fathom this: 
A kiss is every other kiss. 
The reckless vow, the lovely name, 
When Helen walked, were spoke the same; 
The weighted breast, the grinding woe, 
When Phaon fled, were ever so. 
Oh, it is sure as it is sad 
That any lad is every lad, 
And what’s a girl, to dare implore 
Her dear be hers forevermore? 
Though he be tried and he be bold, 
And swearing death should he be cold, 
He’ll run the path the others went.…
But you, my sweet, are different.

I’m not brave because I leave gently. It’s not mercy

when the kill lives serving self. I told my therapist

I’m through with villain portraiture but I keep leaving promises

to wilt. Even this is vanity—garden of self-importance. I’m rambling.

What I mean to say: Love is larger than declaration. & chrysanthemum

don’t thrive in starless night. Who am I to light the sky? I know, no one

loves to end any more than we live to die, but I’m learning not to clutch

the ground so fierce. To trust life is a series of orbits;

worship mercy in routine. I know this part like lost love:

gripping sheets, curling toes, tongue feels righteous but don’t fill

empty space. All hollow goings. Carving fresh cavities to become

known. Nimble fingers, sigh & sweat. Fill me full

of hope. After, glow

again fading.

Back to wilting,

gentle kill.

You up?

There is an evening twilight of the heart, 
    When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest, 
And the eye sees life’s fairy scenes depart, 
    As fades the day-beam in the rosy west. 
’Tis with a nameless feeling of regret
    We gaze upon them as they melt away, 
And fondly would we bid them linger yet, 
    But Hope is round us with her angel lay, 
Hailing afar some happier moonlight hour;
Dear are her whispers still, though lost their early power. 

In youth the cheek was crimsoned with her glow;
    Her smile was loveliest then; her matin song
Was heaven’s own music, and the note of woe
    Was all unheard her sunny bowers among. 
Life’s little word of bliss was newly born;
    We knew not, cared not, it was born to die,
Flushed with the cool breeze and the dews of morn,
    With dancing heart we gazed on the pure sky, 
And mocked the passing clouds that dimmed its blue,
Like our own sorrows then—as fleeting and as few. 

And manhood felt her sway too—on the eye, 
    Half realized, her early dreams burst bright, 
Her promised bower of happiness seemed nigh, 
    Its days of joy, its vigils of delight;
And though at times might lower the thunder-storm,
    And the red lightnings threaten, still the air
Was balmy with her breath, and her loved form,
    The rainbow of the heart was hovering there. 
’Tis in life’s noontide she is nearest seen,
Her wreath the summer flower, her robe of summer green. 

But though less dazzling in her twilight dress, 
    There’s more of heaven’s pure beam about her now;
That angel-smile of tranquil loveliness, 
    Which the heart worships, glowing on her brow;
That smile shall brighten the dim evening star 
    That points our destined tomb, nor e’er depart
Till the faint light of life is fled afar, 
    And hushed the last deep beating of the heart;
The meteor-bearer of our parting breath, 
A moonbeam in the midnight cloud of death. 

Along the Eastern shore the low waves creep,
   Making a ceaseless music on the sand,
   A song that gulls and curlews understand,
   The lullaby that sings the day to sleep.
A thousand miles afar, the grim pines keep
   Unending watch upon a shoreless land,
   Yet through their tops, swept by some wizard hand,
   The sound of surf comes singing up the steep.
Sweet, thou canst hear the tidal litany;
   I, mid the pines land-wearied, may but dream
   Of the far shore; but though the distance seem
Between us fixed, impassable, to me
   Cometh thy soul’s voice, chanting love’s old theme,
   And mine doth answer, as the pines the sea.

¹⁸⁸⁵

A month or twain to live on honeycomb 
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time, 
Cold sweet recurrence of acceptance rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam 
Where the wine’s heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first. 

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray 
Even to change the bitterness of it, 
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet, 
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay 
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise 
Over my face and eyes. 

And yet who knows what end the scythed wheat 
Makes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red? 
These were not sown, these are not harvested,
They grow a month and are cast under feet 
And none has care thereof, 
As none has care of a divided love. 

I know each shadow of your lips by rote, 
Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
The fashion of fair temples tremulous 
With tender blood, and colour of your throat;
I know not how love is gone out of this, 
Seeing that all was his. 

Love’s likeness there endures upon all these:
But out of these one shall not gather love. 
Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough 
To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,
As some bee-builded cell 
Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell. 

I know not how this last month leaves your hair 
Less full of purple colour and hid spice, 
And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;
And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet 
Worth patience to regret. 

^{(In the city)}

The sun is near set 
And the tall buildings 
Become teeth 
Tearing bloodily at the sky’s throat;
The blank wall by my window
Becomes night sky over the marches 
When there is no moon, and no wind, 
And little fishes splash in the pools.

I had lit my candle to make a song for you, 
But I have forgotten it for I am very tired;
And the candle … a yellow moth …
Flutters, flutters, 
Deep in my brain. 
My song was about, ‘a foreign lady
Who was beautiful and sad, 
Who was forsaken, and who died 
A thousand years ago.’
But the cracked cup at my elbow,
With dregs of tea in it, 
Fixes my tired thought more surely 
Than the song I made for you and forgot …
That I might give you this. 

I am tired. 

I am so tired
That my soul is a great plain 
Made desolate,
And the beating of a million hearts 
Is but the whisper of night winds
Blowing across it. 

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.

^{translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert}

Oh moon, you crown of an enormous head
thinning in shadowy goldenness!
You crimson crown of a Jesus who thinks
of emeralds with a tragic sweetness.

Oh moon, you crazy heart of the sky,
why row on like this, in the blue wine
of the goblet, and ever westward,
with such a vanquished, aching stern?

Oh moon, by flying away in vain like this,
you obliviate into a spatter of opals;
perhaps you are my gypsy heart, which wails
its verses while wandering out in the blue.

Deshojación sagrada

Luna! Corona de una testa inmensa,
que te vas deshojando en sombras gualdas!
Roja corona de un Jesús que piensa
trágicamente dulce de esmeraldas!

Luna! Alocado corazón celeste
¿por qué bogas así, dentro la copa
llena de vino azul, hacia el oeste,
cual derrotada y dolorida popa?

Luna! Y a fuerza de volar en vano,
te holocaustas en ópalos dispersos:
tú eres tal vez mi corazón gitano
que vaga en el azul llorando versos! . . . 

^{Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες
          —Sappho}

When the moon was high I waited,
   Pale with evening’s tints it shone;
When its gold came slow, belated,
   Still I kept my watch alone

When it sank, a golden wonder,
   From my window still I bent,
Though the clouds hung thick with thunder
   Where our hilltop roadway went.

By the cypress tops I’ve counted
   Every golden star that passed;
Weary hours they’ve shone and mounted,
   Each more tender than the last.

All my pillows hot with turning,
   All my weary maids asleep;
Every star in heaven was burning
   For the tryst you did not keep.

Now the clouds have hushed their warning,
   Paleness creeps upon the sea;
One star more, and then the morning—
   Share, oh, share that star with me!

Never fear that I shall chide thee
   For the wasted stars of night,
So thine arms will come and hide me
   From the dawn’s unwelcome light.

Though the moon a heav’n had given us,
   Every star a crown and throne,
Till the morn apart had driven us—
   Let the last star be our own.

Ah! the cypress tops are sighing
   With the wind that brings the day;
There my last pale treasure dying
   Ebbs in jeweled light away;

Ebbs like water bright, untasted;
   Black the cypress, bright the sea;
Heav’n’s whole treasury lies wasted
   And the dawn burns over me.

^{translated from the French of Judith Gautier by James Whitall}

Before daybreak the breezes whisper 
through the trellis at my window;
they interrupt and carry off my dream, 
and he of whom I dreamed 
vanishes from me. 

I climb upstairs 
to look from the topmost window, 
but with whom? . . .

I remember how I used to stir the fire 
with my hairpin of jade 
as I am doing now . . .
but the brasier holds nothing but ashes. 

I turn to look at the mountain; 
there is a thick mist, 
a dismal rain, 
and I gaze down at the wind-dappled river, 
the river that flows past me forever 
without bearing away my sorrow. 

I have kept the rain of my tears 
on the crape of my tunic; 
with a gesture I fling these bitter drops 
to the wild swans on the river, 
that they may be my messengers.

Les Cygnes Sauvages

^{translated from the Chinese of Li Qingzhao by Judith Gautier}

Le vent souffle, avant l’aube, au dehors, sur les treillis de ma fenêtre.

Il interrompt et emporte mon rêve, il efface tout vestige de lui.

Pour voir aux alentours, je monte à l’étage supérieur . . . avec qui? . . .

Autrefois, je me souviens, du bout de l’épingle en jade de ma coiffure, je remuais le feu,

Comme je le fais à présent . . . mais le brasero est éteint.

Je tourne la tête vers la montagne: la pluie, un épais brouillard.

Je regarde vers le fleuve, tout bossué de vagues; le fleuve qui coule toujours, devant moi, sans emporter ma peine.

Sur le crêpe de ma tunique, j’ai gardé la pluie de mes larmes;

D’une chiquenaude, je chasse ces gouttes amères vers les cygnes du fleuve, pour qu’ils soient mes messagers.

浪淘沙·帘外五更风

帘外五更风，
吹梦无踪。
画楼重上与谁同？
记得玉钗斜拨火，
宝篆成空。

回首紫金峰，
雨润烟浓。
一江春浪醉醒中。
留得罗襟前日泪，
弹与征鸿。

^{Translated from the Arabic by Joseph Dacre Carlyle} 

When you told us our glances, soft, timid, and mild,
      Could occasion such wounds in the heart,
Can ye wonder that yours, so ungovern’d and wild,
      Some wounds to our cheeks should impart?

The wounds on our cheeks, are but transient, I own,
      With a blush they appear and decay;
But those on the heart, fickle youths, ye have shewn
      To be even more transient than they.

Slanting, driving, Summer rain
How you wash my heart of pain!
How you make me think of trees,
Ships and gulls and flashing seas!
In your furious, tearing wind,
Swells a chant that heals my mind;
And your passion high and proud,
Makes me shout and laugh aloud!

Autumn rains that start at dawn,
“Dropping veils of thinnest lawn,”
Soaking sod between dank grasses,
Sweeping golden leaves in masses,—
Blotting, blurring out the Past,
In a dream you hold me fast;
Calling, coaxing to forget
Things that are, for things not yet.

Winter tempest, winter rain,
Hurtling down with might and main,
You but make me hug my hearth,
Laughing, sheltered from your wrath.
Now I woo my dancing fire,
Piling, piling drift-wood higher.
Books and friends and pictures old,
Hearten while you pound and scold!

Pattering, wistful showers of Spring
Set me to remembering
Far-off times and lovers too,
Gentle joys and heart-break rue,—
Memories I’d as lief forget,
Were not oblivion sadder yet.
Ah! you twist my mind with pain,
Wistful, whispering April rain!

Summer, Autumn, Winter rain,
How you ease my heart of pain!
Whispering, wistful showers of Spring,
How I love the hurt you bring!

Ah, I know what happiness is. . . .
It is a timid little fawn
Creeping softly up to me
For one caress, then gone
Before I’m through with it . . .
Away, like dark from dawn!
Well I know what happiness is . . . !
It is the break of day that wears
A shining dew decked diadem . . .
An aftermath of tears.
Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy . . .
I’ve played with them for years,
And always they will slip away
Into the brush of another day.

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks
And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat, my center.

Better to walk forth in the murderous air
And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing,
Because my heart would throb less painful there,
Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.

Which would you choose, and for what boot in gold,
The absence, or the absence and the cold?

What of the days when we two dreamed together?
    Days marvellously fair,
As lightsome as a skyward floating feather
    Sailing on summer air—
Summer, summer, that came drifting through
Fate’s hand to me, to you.

What of the days, my dear? I sometimes wonder
    If you too wish this sky
Could be the blue we sailed so softly under,
    In that sun-kissed July;
Sailed in the warm and yellow afternoon,
With hearts in touch and tune.

Have you no longing to re-live the dreaming,
    Adrift in my canoe?
To watch my paddle blade all wet and gleaming
    Cleaving the waters through?
To lie wind-blown and wave-caressed, until
Your restless pulse grows still?

Do you not long to listen to the purling
    Of foam athwart the keel?
To hear the nearing rapids softly swirling
    Among their stones, to feel
The boat’s unsteady tremor as it braves
The wild and snarling waves?

What need of question, what of your replying?
    Oh! well I know that you
Would toss the world away to be but lying
    Again in my canoe,
In listless indolence entranced and lost,
Wave-rocked, and passion tossed.

Ah me! my paddle failed me in the steering
    Across love’s shoreless seas;
All reckless, I had ne’er a thought of fearing
    Such dreary days as these.
When through the self-same rapids we dash by,
My lone canoe and I.

Now that our love has drifted
To a quiet close,
Leaving the empty ache
That always follows when beauty goes;
Now that you and I,
Who stood tip-toe on earth
To touch our fingers to the sky,
Have turned away
To allow our little love to die—
Go, dear, seek again the magic touch.
But if you are wise,
As I shall be wise,
You will not again
Love over much.

I must be far from men and women
To love their ways.
I must be on a mountain
Breathing greatly like a tree
If my heart would yearn a little
For the peopled, placid valley.
I must be in a bare place
And lonely as a moon
To find the graceless ways of people
Worthful as a flower’s ways,
A flower that lives for loneliness
And dies when beauty dies.

I cannot find music
On the tongues of men and women
Unless I hear their voices
Like echoes, silence-softened.
Their many words mean little.
Their mouths are blatant sparrows.

I must be far from men and women,
As God is far away,
To keep my faith with Beauty,
My heart sweet towards them,
And love them with a god’s tranquility.

^{“When you are trapped in a nightmare, your motivation to awaken will be so much greater than that of someone caught up in a relatively pleasant dream.”
—Eckhart Tolle}

When I realized the storm
was inevitable, I made it
my medicine.

Took two snowflakes
on the tongue in the morning,
two snowflakes on the tongue
by noon.

There were no side effects.
Only sound effects. Reverb
added to my lifespan,
an echo that asked—

What part of your life’s record is skipping?
What wound is on repeat?
Have you done everything you can
to break out of that groove?

By nighttime, I was intimate
with the difference
between tying my laces
and tuning the string section

of my shoes, made a symphony of walking
away from everything that did not
want my life to sing.

Felt a love for myself so consistent
metronomes tried to copyright my heartbeat.

Finally understood I am the conductor
of my own life, and will be even after I die.
I, like the trees, will decide what I become:

Porch swing? Church pew?
An envelope that must be licked to be closed?
Kinky choice, but I didn’t close.

I opened and opened
until I could imagine that the pain
was the sensation of my spirit
not breaking,

that my mind was a parachute
that could always open
in time,

that I could wear my heart
on my sleeve and never grow
out of that shirt.

That every falling leaf is a tiny kite
with a string too small to see, held
by the part of me in charge
of making beauty
out of grief.

^{for Maya}

We meet at a coffee shop. So much time has passed and who is time? Who is waiting by the windowsill? We make plans to go to a museum but we go to a bookshop instead. We’re leaning in, learning how to talk to each other again. I say, I’m obsessed with my grief and she says, I’m always in mourning. She laughs and it’s an extension of her body. She laughs and it moves the whole room. I say, My home is an extension of my body and she says, Most days are better with a long walk. The world moves without us—so we tend to a garden, a graveyard, a pot on the windowsill. Death is a comfort because it says, Transform but don’t hurry. There is a tenderness to growing older and we are listening for it. Steadier ways to move through the world and we are learning them. A way to touch your own body. A touch that says, Dig deeper. There, in the ground, there is our memory. I am near enough my roots. Time is my friend. Tomorrow is a place we are together.

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
   This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
   There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

It dreams in the deepest sleep, it remembers the storm
       last month or it feels the far storm
Off Unalaska and the lash of the sea-rain.
It is never mournful but wise, and takes the magical
       misrule of the steep world
With strong tolerance, its depth is not moved
From where the green sun fails to where the thin red clay
       lies on the basalt
And there has never been light nor life.
The black crystal, the untroubled fountain, the roots of
       endurance.

                      Therefore I belted
The house and the tower and courtyard with stone,
And have planted the naked foreland with future forest
       toward noon and morning: for it told me,
The time I was gazing in the black crystal,
To be faithful in storm, patient of fools, tolerant of
       memories and the muttering prophets,
It is needful to have night in one’s body.

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
     ⁠The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
     With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
     Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
     His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
     He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
     For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
     You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
     With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
     When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
     Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
     And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
     Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
     And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
     He hears his daughter's voice
Singing in the village choir,
     And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice
     Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
     How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
     A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
     Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
     Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
     Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
     For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
     Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
     Each burning deed and thought.

        Oh! snatched away in Beauty's bloom,
             On thee shall press no ponderous tomb,
        But on thy turf shall roses rear
        Their leaves, the earliest of the year,
And the wild cypress wave in tender gloom

   And oft by yon blue gushing stream
       Shall Sorrow lean her drooping head,
   And feed deep thought with many a dream,
       And lingering pause and lightly tread,
Fond wretch! as if her step disturbed the dead!

   Away! we know that tears are vain,
       That Death nor heeds nor hears distress
   Will this unteach us to complain?
       Or make one mourner weep the less?
And thou—who tell'st me to forget,
Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet.

Does the heart grieve on,
After its grief is gone
Like a slow ship moving
Across its own oblivion?

Heart! Heart! Do you not know
That I have conquered pain,
Have parted from my woe?
That my proud feet have found their path again,
After the pathless heights-long after-
And that my hands have learned to bless
Their overflowing emptiness,
My lips grown reconciled to laughter?

O laggard of dead roads,
O heart that will not heal nor break
Nor yet forget!
Tell me, whose tears are these
That greet me as I wake?
Why is my pillow wet?

Red rebel, is it you
That lifted this wild dew
Like banners from my arid dreams,
That roused this ember
From exiled ashes,
Calling me to remember?

Speak, is it you that wept
Upon my pillow while I slept?

Does the heart then grieve on,
After its grief is gone,
A treasure ship that journeys
Across its own oblivion?

Sombre,
Sombre is the night, the stars’ light is dimmed
With smoky exhalations of the earth,
Whose ancient voice is lifted on the wind
In ceaseless elegies and songs of tears.
O earth, I hear thee mourning for thy dead!
Thou art waving the long grass over thy graves;
Murmuring over all thy resting children,
That have run and wandered and gone down
Upon thy bosom.   Thou wilt mourn for him
Who looketh now a moment on these stars,
And in the moving boughs of this dark night
Heareth the murmurous sorrow of thy heart.

^{translated from the Hebrew by Emma Lazarus}

Night, and the heavens beam serene with peace, 
Like a pure heart benignly smiles the moon.
Oh, guard thy blessed beauty from mischance, 
This I beseech thee in all tender love. 
See where the Storm his cloudy mantle spreads, 
An ashy curtain covereth the moon. 
As if the tempest thirsted for the rain, 
The clouds he presses, till they burst in streams. 
Heaven wears a dusky raiment, and the moon
Appeareth dead—her tomb is yonder cloud, 
And weeping shades come after, like the people 
Who mourn with tearful grief a noble queen. 
But look! the thunder pierced night’s close-linked mail,
His keen-tipped lance of lightning brandishing;
He lovers like a seraph-conqueror.—
Dazed by the flaming splendor of his wings, 
In rapid flight as in a whirling dance, 
The black cloud-ravens hurry scared away. 
So, though the powers of darkness chain my soul, 
My heart, a hero, chafes and breaks its bonds. 

^{after Gwendolyn Brooks}

My wild grief didn’t know where to end.
Everywhere I looked: a field alive and unburied.
Whole swaths of green swallowed the light.
All around me, the field was growing. I grew out
My hair in every direction. Let the sun freckle my face.
Even in the greenest depths, I crouched
Towards the light. That summer, everything grew
So alive and so alone. A world hushed in green.
Wildest grief grew inside out.

I crawled to the field’s edge, bruises blooming
In every crevice of my palms.
I didn’t know I’d reached a shoreline till I felt it
There: A salt wind lifted
The hair from my neck.
At the edge of every green lies an ocean.
When I saw that blue, I knew then:
This world will end.

Grief is not the only geography I know.
Every wound closes. Repair comes with sweetness,
Come spring. Every empire will fall:
I must believe this. I felt it
Somewhere in the field: my ancestors
Murmuring Go home, go home—soon, soon.
No country wants me back anymore and I’m okay.

If grief is love with nowhere to go, then
Oh, I’ve loved so immensely.
That summer, everything I touched
Was green. All bruises will fade
From green and blue to skin.
Let me grow through this green
And not drown in it.
Let me be lawless and beloved,
Ungovernable and unafraid.
Let me be brave enough to live here.
Let me be precise in my actions.
Let me feel hurt.
I know I can heal.
Let me try again—again and again.

^{translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert}

Every day, I come to watch you pass,
little steamer, magical and always distant. . . 
Your eyes are a pair of blondish captains,
your lip a slip of kerchief, red and
bidding its blood goodbyes.

I will come to watch you pass—
drunk on time, on cruelty, you magical
little steamer, always distant—until that day
when the evening star takes leave.

The rigging, the traitor winds, the currents
from a woman who just walked past—
Then your cold captains will issue orders,
And the one to take leave will be me.

Bordas de Hielo

Vengo a verte pasar todos los días,
vaporcito encantado siempre lejos. . . 
Tus ojos son dos rubios capitanes;
tu labio que ondea en un adios de sangre!

Vengo a verte pasar; hasta que un día,
embriagada de tiempo y de crueldad,
vaporcito encantado siempre lejos,
la estrella de la tarde partirá!

Las jarcias; vientos que traicionan; vientos
de mujer que pasó!
Tus fríos capitanes darán orden;
y quien habrá partido seré yo. . . !

Speak, beast.
                         Speak.

            Curled suburban cuddle in front of the fireplace,
            possum-dreaming and paw-kicking, your fur
            a tumbleweed down the waxed hallway, your ears
            cropped and your tail docked,
                         speak.

            Or how about you? Yes, you: spotted neck stretched
            towards what’s left of your acacia trees, neck as long as
            a man’s grave is deep, I need you to fire that impossible
            distance between your heart and tongue and
                         speak. Speak,

            you barred owls with the pink tip of a poisoned
            mouse dangling from your beak, all your many neck bones
            hinged in one spot so you can pivot your blinking
            face to me. I am watching; I am waiting;
                         look at me and
                         speak. Speak,

            you black snake drowsing on the hot blacktop,
            your forked tongue remembering the long kiss
            of voles in tall grass, a memory gone when the woman
            runs over you—then twice again, just to be sure. I need you
                         to speak. Speak,

            you jittering squirrels, you murder of crows, you quarrel
            of sparrows, you pitying of turtledoves, you everyday
            outside flick of life at the mercy of these coming winds, these rising
            waters filthy and licking with flames.

                         Speak, sing to me, caw and fuss
                         among what brittle branches
                         left, I have opened my windows;

                         I am listening.
                         Speak,

            you hellbender—giant salamander you are—a rarity
            now put on educational display, you eel-looking
            haint once pulled up by fisherman in these mountains.
                         Speak, because no one knows who you are
            anymore; you must make us remember. Turn your
            slack maw to my tapping on the bent plexiglass
                         and speak.
                         Say what it is you need to say.

            Oh, and you. You with your thick skull blown apart
            with a high-caliber swagger, your memory long
            and your once trumpeting
                         gone, speak to me
                         from beyond.
                         Tell me
            what it was to have those ears of yours in fury,
            raised like giant gray flags, how hard you fought,
            and even once shot how you just stood there
            confused, already dead but refusing to fall
            until your knees buckled, the rest of you slumped,
            and the great pillars of your tusks were
            chain-sawed from your face.
                                                I need to hear especially
            from you: I have a photo here of a man
            grinning with your lopped-off tail in his fist.
            I need you
                         to speak, dammit,
                         speak.
                         Say what it is you need to say.

            Or how about you: kin but safe
            in a cage, I’ve heard your placid
            chewing at the zoo—you took a sweet potato
            from my hand with the wet, breathing end
            of your trunk, slid it into the deep
            socket of your mouth.
                         I know that sound—
            I smiled at your keeper, fed you another treat, but now,
                         now, I need to you to speak.
                         Try it—swallow down
                         that food and flex
                         your tongue, push out the
                         grassy air from those
                         miraculous lungs.
                         I am waiting;
                         we are all waiting.                          
                         I am begging. Please, beast.

                         Speak.
                         We are running out of
                         time; there are so many us, and what’s left

of you are
swaying in pens, rocking from side to side, sleeping and aching
and craving and thinking—I know you are thinking—
but not saying a damn word.

            No, not one, not one,
            which I all we need,
            I swear—all of you,

you birds and cicadas, all you flying, leaping, vine-grabbing
canopy beings, all you furred and quilled things too,
or you chittering in your burrows and hiding the dark—
step from the mouth of your dens and speak.

            Listen to me,
            you belong here,

you with a mouth full of milk, with dirt under your claws, all of you
rooting and panting and hibernating and ruminating and standing
by the fence, watching us speed past in our cars.

            Listen to me.
            I need you to try,
            try to say
            just one word.

We can start slow with the low pleasure
sound, the delicious mmmm that closes the door to home,

then growl out that middle vowel and what comes after,
let the back of your throat issue forth a warning
and mean it, get angry with me,
because you’ve had enough, because if you don’t find these sounds

there will be nothing left.

Now, you’re almost there—

pull back your lips if you have them, show your teeth
if you have them, hiss, let out all the air, whatever air is left
and in doing so take us back to all our beginnings
with the sound of waves, with that final syllable—sea.

            Now try again.
            Try again.
            Try, please try.

            All at once.
            It’s such a small
            word on which
            your lives depend.

            I’ll do anything.
            Please, beast. Speak.
            Say it, with me, now:

            MERcy, merCY, mERcy, meeercy, merrrrcy, mercy, mercy, mercy.

            Now, please. Try. Try again.

            Repeat after me

I.

Ah, yes, 't is sweet still to remember,
    Though 't were less painful to forget;
For while my heart glows like an ember,
    Mine eyes with sorrow's drops are wet,
    And, oh, my heart is aching yet.
It is a law of mortal pain
    That old wounds, long accounted well,
    Beneath the memory's potent spell,
Will wake to life and bleed again.

So 't is with me; it might be better
    If I should turn no look behind,—
If I could curb my heart, and fetter
    From reminiscent gaze my mind,
    Or let my soul go blind—go blind!
But would I do it if I could?
    Nay! ease at such a price were spurned;
    For, since my love was once returned,
All that I suffer seemeth good.

I know, I know it is the fashion,
    When love has left some heart distressed,
To weight the air with wordful passion;
    But I am glad that in my breast
    I ever held so dear a guest.
Love does not come at every nod,
    Or every voice that calleth "hasten;"
    He seeketh out some heart to chasten,
And whips it, wailing, up to God!

Love is no random road wayfarer
    Who Where he may must sip his glass.
Love is the King, the Purple-Wearer,
    Whose guard recks not of tree or grass
    To blaze the way that he may pass.
What if my heart be in the blast
    That heralds his triumphant way;
    Shall I repine, shall I not say:
"Rejoice, my heart, the King has passed!"

In life, each heart holds some sad story—
    The saddest ones are never told.
I, too, have dreamed of fame and glory,
    And viewed the future bright with gold;
    But that is as a tale long told.
Mine eyes have lost their youthful flash,
    My cunning hand has lost its art;
    I am not old, but in my heart
The ember lies beneath the ash.

I loved! Why not? My heart was youthful,
    My mind was filled with healthy thought.
He doubts not whose own self is truthful,
    Doubt by dishonesty is taught;
    So loved I boldly, fearing naught.
I did not walk this lowly earth;
    Mine was a newer, higher sphere,
    Where youth was long and life was dear,
And all save love was little worth.

Her likeness! Would that I might limn it,
    As Love did, with enduring art;
Nor dust of days nor death may dim it,
    Where it lies graven on my heart,
    Of this sad fabric of my life a part.
I would that I might paint her now
    As I beheld her in that day,
    Ere her first bloom had passed away,
And left the lines upon her brow.

A face serene that, beaming brightly,
    Disarmed the hot sun's glances bold.
A foot that kissed the ground so lightly,
    He frowned in wrath and deemed her cold,
    But loved her still though he was old.
A form where every maiden grace
    Bloomed to perfection's richest flower,—
    The statued pose of conscious power,
Like lithe-limbed Dian's of the chase.

Beneath a brow too fair for frowning,
    Like moon-lit deeps that glass the skies
Till all the hosts above seem drowning,
    Looked forth her steadfast hazel eyes,
    With gaze serene and purely wise.
And over all, her tresses rare,
    Which, when, with his desire grown weak,
    The Night bent down to kiss her cheek,
Entrapped and held him captive there.

This was Ione; a spirit finer
    Ne'er burned to ash its house of clay;
A soul instinct with fire diviner
    Ne'er fled athwart the face of day,
    And tempted Time with earthly stay.
Her loveliness was not alone
    Of face and form and tresses' hue;
    For aye a pure, high soul shone through
Her every act: this was Ione.

II.

'T was in the radiant summer weather,
    When God looked, smiling, from the sky;
And we went wand'ring much together
    By wood and lane, Ione and I,
    Attracted by the subtle tie
Of common thoughts and common tastes,
    Of eyes whose vision saw the same,
    And freely granted beauty's claim
Where others found but worthless wastes.

We paused to hear the far bells ringing
    Across the distance, sweet and clear.
We listened to the wild bird's singing
    The song he meant for his mate's ear,
    And deemed our chance to do so dear.
We loved to watch the warrior Sun,
    With flaming shield and flaunting crest,
    Go striding down the gory West,
When Day's long fight was fought and won.

And life became a different story;
    Where'er I looked, I saw new light.
Earth's self assumed a greater glory,
    Mine eyes were cleared to fuller sight.
    Then first I saw the need and might
Of that fair band, the singing throng,
    Who, gifted with the skill divine,
    Take up the threads of life, spun fine,
And weave them into soulful song.

They sung for me, whose passion pressing
    My soul, found vent in song nor line.
They bore the burden of expressing
    All that I felt, with art's design,
    And every word of theirs was mine.
I read them to Ione, ofttimes,
    By hill and shore, beneath fair skies,
    And she looked deeply in mine eyes,
And knew my love spoke through their rhymes.

Her life was like the stream that floweth,
    And mine was like the waiting sea;
Her love was like the flower that bloweth,
    And mine was like the searching bee—
    I found her sweetness all for me.
God plied him in the mint of time,
    And coined for us a golden day,
    And rolled it ringing down life's way
With love's sweet music in its chime.

And God unclasped the Book of Ages,
    And laid it open to our sight;
Upon the dimness of its pages,
    So long consigned to rayless night,
    He shed the glory of his light.
We read them well, we read them long,
    And ever thrilling did we see
    That love ruled all humanity,—
The master passion, pure and strong.

III.

To-day my skies are bare and ashen,
    And bend on me without a beam.
Since love is held the master-passion,
    Its loss must be the pain supreme—
    And grinning Fate has wrecked my dream.
But pardon, dear departed Guest,
    I will not rant, I will not rail;
    For good the grain must feel the flail;
There are whom love has never blessed.

I had and have a younger brother,
    One whom I loved and love to-day
As never fond and doting mother
    Adored the babe who found its way
    From heavenly scenes into her day.
Oh, he was full of youth's new wine,—
    A man on life's ascending slope,
    Flushed with ambition, full of hope;
And every wish of his was mine.

A kingly youth; the way before him
    Was thronged with victories to be won;
So joyous, too, the heavens o'er him
    Were bright with an unchanging sun,—
    His days with rhyme were overrun.
Toil had not taught him Nature's prose,
    Tears had not dimmed his brilliant eyes,
    And sorrow had not made him wise;
His life was in the budding rose.

I know not how I came to waken,
    Some instinct pricked my soul to sight;
My heart by some vague thrill was shaken,—
    A thrill so true and yet so slight,
    I hardly deemed I read aright.
As when a sleeper, ign'rant why,
    Not knowing what mysterious hand
    Has called him out of slumberland,
Starts up to find some danger nigh.

Love is a guest that comes, unbidden,
    But, having come, asserts his right;
He will not be repressed nor hidden.
    And so my brother's dawning plight
    Became uncovered to my sight.
Some sound-mote in his passing tone
    Caught in the meshes of my ear;
    Some little glance, a shade too dear,
Betrayed the love he bore Ione.

What could I do? He was my brother,
    And young, and full of hope and trust;
I could not, dared not try to smother
    His flame, and turn his heart to dust.
    I knew how oft life gives a crust
To starving men who cry for bread;
    But he was young, so few his days,
    He had not learned the great world's ways,
Nor Disappointment's volumes read.

However fair and rich the booty,
    I could not make his loss my gain.
For love is dear, but dearer, duty,
    And here my way was clear and plain.
    I saw how I could save him pain.
And so, with all my day grown dim,
    That this loved brother's sun might shine,
    I joined his suit, gave over mine,
And sought Ione, to plead for him.

I found her in an eastern bower,
    Where all day long the am'rous sun
Lay by to woo a timid flower.
    This day his course was well-nigh run,
    But still with lingering art he spun
Gold fancies on the shadowed wall.
    The vines waved soft and green above,
    And there where one might tell his love,
I told my griefs—I told her all!

I told her all, and as she hearkened,
    A tear-drop fell upon her dress.
With grief her flushing brow was darkened;
    One sob that she could not repress
    Betrayed the depths of her distress.
Upon her grief my sorrow fed,
    And I was bowed with unlived years,
    My heart swelled with a sea of tears,
The tears my manhood could not shed.

The world is Rome, and Fate is Nero,
    Disporting in the hour of doom.
God made us men; times make the hero—
    But in that awful space of gloom
    I gave no thought but sorrow's room.
All—all was dim within that bower,
    What time the sun divorced the day;
    And all the shadows, glooming gray,
Proclaimed the sadness of the hour.

She could not speak—no word was needed;
    Her look, half strength and half despair,
Told me I had not vainly pleaded,
    That she would not ignore my prayer.
    And so she turned and left me there,
And as she went, so passed my bliss;
    She loved me, I could not mistake—
    But for her own and my love's sake,
Her womanhood could rise to this!

My wounded heart fled swift to cover,
    And life at times seemed very drear.
My brother proved an ardent lover—
    What had so young a man to fear?
    He wed Ione within the year.
No shadow clouds her tranquil brow,
    Men speak her husband's name with pride,
    While she sits honored at his side—
She is—she must be happy now!

I doubt the course I took no longer,
    Since those I love seem satisfied.
The bond between them will grow stronger
    As they go forward side by side;
    Then will my pains be justified.
Their joy is mine, and that is best—
    I am not totally bereft,
    For I have still the mem'ry left—
Love stopped with me—a Royal Guest!

Beyond the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live;
You pace the garden walk, secure and sensitive;
You linger on the stair: Love’s lonely pulses leap!
The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep. 

Here, after all the years, you keep the heirdom still;
The youth and joy in you achieve their olden will,
Unbidden, undeterred, with waking sense adored;
And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord.

To every inmate heart, confirmed in cheer you brought,
Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought,
And to a wonted guest (not awestruck heretofore),
The sunshine that was you floods all the open door. 

We lay in shade diaphanous
And spoke the light that burns in us

As in the glooming’s net I caught her,
She shimmered like reflected water!

Romantic and emphatic moods
Are not for her whom life eludes...

Its vulgar tinsel round her fold?
She'd rather shudder with the cold,

Attend just this elusive hour,
A shadow in a shadow bower,

A moving imagery so fine,
It must have been her soul near mine

And so we blended and possessed
Each in each the phantom guest,

Inseparate, we scarcely met;
Yet other love-nights we forget!

The roosters give the signal for daybreak, 
  And through my window pours the grey of morn; 
Refreshing breezes fan me as I wake, 
   And down the valley sounds the wesly horn. 

Day broadens, and I ope the window wide, 
   And brilliant sunbeams, mixing, rush between
The gaping blinds, while down at my bedside
   I kneel to utter praise to the Unseen. 

The torch-light glistens through the wattle-pane, 
   And clouds of smoke wreathe upward to the skies; 
My brother at the squeezer juices cane, 
  And visions of tea-hour before me rise. 

Leaving the valley’s cup the fleeting fog
   Steals up the hill-sides decked with sunbeams rare, 
Which send their search-rays ’neath the time-worn log, 
  And drive the sleeping majoes from their lair. 

But there are some that yest’reve was the last 
  For them to sleep into their watery bed; 
For now my treacherous fish-pot has them fast, 
   Their cruel foe which they had so long dread’. 

Right joyfully I hear the school-bell ring, 
   And by my sister’s side away I trot; 
I’m happy as the swee-swees on the wing, 
   And feel naught but contentment in my lot. 

I lightly gambol on the school-yard green, 
  And where the damsels by the bamboo grove
In beautiful and stately growth are seen, 
   For tiny shiny star-apples I rove. 

.     .      .      .      .      .  

The morning wind blows softly past my door, 
   And we prepare for work with gladsome heart; 
Sweetly the wesly horn resounds once more, 
  A warning that ’tis time for us to start. 

I scamper quickly ’cross the fire-burnt soil, 
   And the coarse grass-tufts prick my tender feet; 
I watch my father at his honest toil, 
   And wonder how he stands the sun’s fierce heat. 

A winding footpath down the woodland leads, 
  And through the tall fox-tails I wend my way 
Down to the brooklet where the pea-dove feeds, 
   And bucktoes in the water are at play. 

And watching as the bubbles rise and fall, 
   I hear above the murmur of the dale
The tropic music dear to great and small, 
   The joyous outburst of the nightingale. 

.     .       .        .      .       .

Gone now those happy days when all was blest, 
   For I have left my home and kindred dear; 
In a strange place I am a stranger’s guest, 
   The pains, the real in life, I’ve now to bear. 

No more again I’ll idle at my will, 
  Running the mongoose down upon the lea;
No more I’ll jostle Monty up the hill, 
   To pick the cashews off the laden tree. 

I feel the sweetness of those days again, 
   And hate, so hate, on the past scenes to look; 
All night in dreaming comes the awful pain, 
   All day I groan beneath the iron yoke. 

In mercy then, ye Gods, deal me swift death! 
   Ah! you refuse, and life instead you give; 
You keep my here and still prolong my breath, 
   That I may suffer all the days I live. 

.      .      .     .     .      .     .

’Tis home again, but not the home of yore; 
   Sadly the scenes of bygone days I view, 
And as I walk the olden paths once more, 
   My heart grows chilly as the morning dew. 

But see! to-day again my life is glad, 
   My heart no more is lone, nor will it pine; 
A comfort comes, an earthly fairy clad
   In white, who guides me with her hand in mine. 

Her lustrous eyes gleam only tender love, 
   And viewing her, an angel form I see; 
I feed my spirit on my gentle dove, 
   My sweetheart Lee, my darling Idalee. 

And where the peenies glow with grenish fire, 
   We kiss and kiss and pledge our hearts as true; 
Of sweet love-words and hugs we never tire, 
   But felt more sorry that they were so few. 

.    .      .        .         .       .

I leave my home again, wand’ring afar, 
   But goes with me her true, her gentle heart, 
Every to be my hope, my guiding star, 
   And whisperings of comfort to impart. 

Methinks we’re strolling by the woodland stream, 
  And my fame thrills with joy to her her sing:
But, O my God! ’tis all—’tis all a dream; 
    This is the end, the rude awakening. 
 

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, 
  The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
  And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
  And be my love in the rain. 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
  Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
  Wild, easily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows. 

There is the gale to urge behind 
  And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
  From which to gather your gown.    
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
  And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
  The rain-fresh goldenrod. 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells   
  But it seems like the sea’s return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
  Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
  Our love came back amain.      
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
  And be my love in the rain.

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
     And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
     When love beckons to you, follow him,
     Though his ways are hard and steep.
     And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
     Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
     And when he speaks to you believe in him,
     Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

     For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
     Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
     So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
     Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself
     He threshes you to make your naked.
     He sifts you to free you from your husks.
     He grinds you to whiteness.
     He kneads you until you are pliant;
     And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

     All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

     But if in your heart you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
     Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
     Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
     Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
     Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
     For love is sufficient unto love.

     When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
     And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

     Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
     But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
     To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
     To know the pain of too much tenderness.
     To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
     And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
     To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
     To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
     To return home at eventide with gratitude;
     And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would. 

^{(For Carl Van Vechten)}

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
My last year's song and next year's bliss.
I know, in spite of all men say
Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
Yea, even in your grave her way
Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
Spring never was so fair and dear
As Beauty makes her seem this year.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats,
I am as helpless in the toil
Of Spring as any lamb that bleats
To feel the solid earth recoil
Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats
Her tocsin call to those who love her,
And lo! the dogwood petals cover

Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek
White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover
About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,
While white and purple lilacs muster
A strength that bears them to a cluster
Of color and odor; for her sake
All things that slept are now awake.

And you and I, shall we lie still,
John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will
Is pulsing up some tremulous
Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death's dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.

"John Keats is dead," they say, but I
Who hear your full insistent cry
In bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
Know John Keats still writes poetry.

And while my head is earthward bowed
To read new life sprung from your shroud,
Folks seeing me must think it strange
That merely spring should so derange
My mind. They do not know that you,
John Keats, keep revel with me, too.
 

^{*Spring, 1924}

^{(To F. S.)}

I loved my friend. 
He went away from me. 
There’s nothing more to say. 
The poem ends, 
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend. 

And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
    And he answered, saying:
    Your friend is your needs answered.
    He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
    And he is your board and your fireside.
    For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

    When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
    And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
    For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
    When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
    For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
    And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
    For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

    And let your best be for your friend.
    If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
    For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
    Seek him always with hours to live.
    For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
    And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
    For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

your little voice 
                              Over the wires came leaping 
and i felt suddenly 
dizzy 
          With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers 
wee skipping high-heeled flames 
courtesied before my eyes 
                                                or twinkling over to my side 
Looked up 
with impertinently exquisite faces 
floating hands were laid upon me 
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing 
up 
Up 
with the pale important 
                                                stars and the Humorous 
                                                                                                moon 
dear girl 
How i was crazy how i cried when i heard 
                                                                              over time 
and tide and death 
leaping 
Sweetly 
               your voice

Sometimes when you start to ramble
or rather when you feel you are starting to ramble
you will say Well, now I’m rambling
though I don’t think you ever are.
And if you ever are I don’t really care.
And not just because I and everyone really 
at times falls into our own unspooling
—which really I think is a beautiful softness
of being human, trying to show someone else
the color of all our threads, wanting another to know 
everything in us we are trying to show them—
but in the specific, 
in the specific of you
here in this car that you are driving
and in which I am sitting beside you
with regards to you 
and your specific mouth
parting to give way
to the specific sweetness that is
the water of your voice 
tumbling forth—like I said 
I don’t ever really mind
how much more 
you might keep speaking
as it simply means 
I get to hear you 
speak for longer. 
What was a stream 
now a river.

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But… you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ’em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

Because dirt, my uncle called,
wore my human face,
into the window
of the abandoned home
where the boy and I
beetled miscible, like a trick,
through the teeming dark.

Because I bared my spine,
its soft gnarls,
for his fingers’ drizzle
to stir
and pry away the alarm
a woman comes
to know is her body.

Because in dining rooms,
aunties gathered to unscramble ayahs
and surveille immaculate windows
for unscarved girls,
their ringed forefingers
always heady with blame.

Because I hastened, a flash,
a mistake of speed.
And no matter how many times
I summoned foot to foot
for the untimely symmetry
of prayer, night after night,
swarming like locusts,
gregarious as Armageddon,
came the apparitions: my uncle,
siphoned forth in the antiseptic light,
watching the boy and I,
like a sore expelled from the center.

Because how easily I believed him,
smothered for months
that dark room beneath
the arsenic trail of my own
isolate fault and heaps
of pistachio ice cream
I dolloped all over
my sedentary, my criminal thighs.

Dear, did we meet in some dim yesterday?
    I half remember how the birds were mute
    Among green leaves and tulip-tinted fruit,
And on the grass, beside a stream, we lay
In early twilight; faintly, far away,
    Came lovely sounds adrift from silver lute,
    With answered echoes of an airy flute,
While Twilight waited tiptoe, fain to stay.

Her violet eyes were sweet with mystery.
    You looked in mine, the music rose and fell
Like little, lisping laughter of the sea;
        Our souls were barks, wind-wafted from the shore—
     Gold cup, a rose, a ruby, who can tell?
         Soft—music ceases—I recall no more.
 

I hear an army charging upon the land,   
  And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:   
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,   
  Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.   
   
They cry unto the night their battle-name:        
  I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.   
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,   
  Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.   
   
They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:   
  They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore. 
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?   
  My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

1.     NOW

        It is turning now,
        the boat of our aspirations.
        The wild rope
        swings
        from the cottonwood tree
        out over the river.
        Turning now,
        the rope swing,
        the boat,
        the river.

        Turning now,
        the rope swing,
        the boat,
        the river.

2.     AT 81, WRITING

        In the clarity of early morning
        he sits, writing. Sunlight
        touches the fine hairs on his arm.
        Muscles ripple gently
        as he moves his pencil,
        the veins on the back of his hand
        illuminated. Little rivers.

        His worn cap is half in shadow,
        his childhood on the farm
        a field his pencil plows,
        new lines
        against furrows of forgetting.

3.     BLESS THE NOW

        Bless the sweetness
        of the final days.
        Praise the last time
        he will understand
        the first time you tell him
        how to boil an egg.

        Bless the first time
        you understand
        that he cannot understand.
        Bless the silence
        when he gives himself 
        to sleep and bless
        the waking and his knowing
        who you are
        again.

        Bless the look
        behind you. Bless
        the years when he was strong
        and you were too busy
        even to notice.

        Bless the now,
        the noticing.

4.     CARAPACE

        It is interesting, isn’t it
        her husband says,
        the architecture of the snow.
        She looks out the window.
        The car wears a carapace,
        a wimple, a chador.

        She chooses “carapace,”
        sees the turtle pull his head
        back under his protection.
        She watches
        as her husband moves away
        from the window.

        He takes his poem,
        the one he will not write,
        with him.

5.     WEIGHT

        Who can describe the weight of love?
        Late we learn how heavy
        When grief is the flood we float above
        And love is the break in the levee.

        And who can take the measure of love?
        How wide it is, or how narrow
        When hope is the breath of the mourning dove
        And death is the quiver and arrow.

6.     COME TO BED

        Come naked into bed, my love—
        I will tell you with my body
        what your body can understand
        even here, where your mind
        slips on the slope of forgetting.

        Loss is a complicated giver.
        It comes, offering relief
        like a lover dressed to kill
        and it will. It will.
        Thief, beggar, need supplicant,
        whatever, this loss’s lips
        are fresh-wound red.

        Come to bed.
        The gift it gives us
        we would never choose—
        this naked understanding:
        how much we have
        to lose.

7.     AFTER TELLING YOU “I NEED RESPITE”

        I dreamed myself on my hands and knees
        on a long, long hill of dung.
        It was dried, mountains of it.
        I was no longer young.

        Dung as far as the eye could see,
        peak after peak to the sky
        and I was on my hands and knees
        and I did not know why.

        There was a door behind me
        and a doorstep, but no wall.
        I have dreamed that door before,
        just a door. No house at all.

        A voice spoke: There is treasure.
        But all that I could find
        was broken glass and danger,
        although the voice was kind.

        And then that dreaming disappeared.
        I watched explosions in the sky
        of fire, body parts and blood.
        Faces on fire, and I

        woke up and turned myself to you
        sleeping next to me
        and tried to sort out what was dream
        and what was prophesy.

8.     BROKEN

        Midnight, and the pain is gone
        but the ghost of pain rattles
        at the windows of the mind.

        How can it be that we
        are blind to love. Above
        the rafters, the ever-afters,

        we remember who we might have been
        when the house of our inheritance
        caves in

9.     YESTERDAY, WHEN YOU FORGOT . . .

        I felt a slam of anger,
        fog
        hardening to ice,
        cold, heavy,
        yet I would not
        could not
        did not in the least desire
        to escape.

        I wore it, anger,
        like a finest fur coat
        in a season when fur
        is out of season—
        immoral, bad taste,
        dangerous to the world
        of diminishing animals.
        It is your animal self
        that is diminishing,
        and I am helpless
        to find you
        in this jungle
        of falling trees.

        The voice in me that needs
        to comfort you, comfort me,
        turned toward hibernation
        until I had nothing
        but a howl.
        I curled to fetal,
        hungered for a cave
        so dark I could no longer see
        what is becoming you and me.

        What is becoming you
        is disappearance,
        and I am unbecoming me.

        Anger felt solid, bold, numb,
        as if it might hold me some

        where.

10.   PRAYER

        Mystery for whom I have no name
        because all names collide, divide,
        diminish,

        help me.

        I go down on my metaphoric knees
        as I push and pull my pen
        along these dim blue lines.
        I feel the dust of the earth in my mouth.
        I am a beggar with a tin cup.

        There is a place beyond a poem—
        beyond naming, beyond claiming
        any righteousness or craft,
        where I have nothing left
        but one word: Please.

11.   ALONE

        I’m already alone.
        What’s known to me
        can’t be

        known to you.
        I must protect you
        from yourself.

        But I can’t know
        how far you go
        protecting me.

        And so
        it may be that we
        are each already alone.

12.   OLD LOVE

        Old love is a ripe persimmon
        on a wild persimmon tree.
        Love, we are old, have you noticed—
        you, and me?

        And our love is old, and sweet and ripe
        on the tip of the lover’s tongue.
        Remember, love, the bitter sting
        Sometimes, when we were young?

        But now we have ripened, round and full
        of golden sweetness, golden sun,
        and we look with surprise at each other:
        You are the one.

        You are the one, beloved,
        we say. Don’t fear the flight.
        We’re just taking the seeds of this sweetness
        back to the earth’s good night.

13.   FOR THIS

        It is for this
        we have been torn
        and mended
        and torn again.
        This glad rag of my old body
        almost every night 
        pulls itself across a white expanse of sheet
        into your arms.

        After harms and threats of harms,
        alarms on the evening news,
        we bear the bruise of knowing
        this world that we love
        will not be ours to mend.
        We bend our bodies into one
        and ride the world once more
        around the sun.

I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, eyes – 
I wonder if It weighs like Mine – 
Or has an Easier size.

I wonder if They bore it long – 
Or did it just begin – 
I could not tell the Date of Mine – 
It feels so old a pain – 

I wonder if it hurts to live – 
And if They have to try – 
And whether – could They choose between – 
It would not be – to die – 

I note that Some – gone patient long – 
At length, renew their smile –  
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil – 

I wonder if when Years have piled –  
Some Thousands – on the Harm –  
That hurt them early – such a lapse
Could give them any Balm –  

Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve – 
Enlightened to a larger Pain –  
In Contrast with the Love –  

The Grieved – are many – I am told –  
There is the various Cause –  
Death – is but one – and comes but once –  
And only nails the eyes –  

There's Grief of Want – and grief of Cold –  
A sort they call "Despair" –  
There's Banishment from native Eyes – 
In sight of Native Air –  

And though I may not guess the kind –  
Correctly – yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary –  

To note the fashions – of the Cross –  
And how they're mostly worn –  
Still fascinated to presume
That Some – are like my own – 

If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Here shall my heart find its haven of calm,
By rush-fringed rivers and rain-fed streams
That glimmer thro’ meadows of lily and palm.
Here shall my soul find its true repose
Under a sunset sky of dreams
Diaphanous, amber and rose.
The air is aglow with the glint and whirl
Of swift wild wings in their homeward flight,
Sapphire, emerald, topaz, and pearl.
Afloat in the evening light.

A brown quail cries from the tamarisk bushes,
A bulbul calls from the cassia-plume,
And thro’ the wet earth the gentian pushes
Her spikes of silvery bloom.
Where’er the foot of the bright shower passes
Fragrant and fresh delights unfold;
The wild fawns feed on the scented grasses,
Wild bees on the cactus-gold.

An ox-cart stumbles upon the rocks,
And a wistful music pursues the breeze
From a shepherd’s pipe as he gathers his flocks
Under the pipal-trees.
And a young Banjara driving her cattle
Lifts up her voice as she glitters by
In an ancient ballad of love and battle
Set to the beat of a mystic tune,
And the faint stars gleam in the eastern sky
To herald a rising moon.

to enjoy myself. enjoying you enjoying. yourself to(o). ooo!       enjoying. to enjoy myself enjoying you enjoying me enjoying myself enjoying you enjoying yourself    . enjoying enjoying yourself enjoying me enjoying you/me.   enjoying.enjoying myself you yourself enjoying yourself enjoying me enjoying you enjoying yourself. enjoying.   enjoying you. enjoying me.    enjoying you&me younme youme enjoying yummi.   enjoying you enjoying me enjoying myself. enjoying you enjoying joy enjoying joy yourself. you yourself joy&me enjoying. us 3 or 4. my joy and your joy — joy we enjoying   you enjoying me. you&me enjoying. you&me joying and enjoying. ain’t joying. andjoying. injoying. Me joying you and you joying me. you&me younme   youme you whom me — us. & joy is the you in me and the me in you. joy   joy.   joy is the and. the end. of all this you and me. younme. you in me. me in you. tho you-you and me-me. both younme i. both younme am. both younme is. joy is the and. joy is the end. joy is the in. the way thru you for me. the way thru you to me. the way thru me for you. the way thru me to you. seein me thru. seein you thru. seein you tru. seein me tru. truly seein thru you and me. truly seein younme. truly seein you in me. me in you. truly seein you and me. me and you. truly seein you end me. me end you. truly younme.

so joy.us how we enjoy ourselves. some each other. (u)s. 

As my tongue runs
down your spine in bed,
outside my parents’ house
sea levels are rising,
the city filling, flooding,
predicted to disappear
in a hundred years. Outside,
the sky is glazed with light,
soap white. The Mississippi
shimmers. So much beauty.
So how wrong is it
to stay in this room?
To hold each other,
to keep our bodies
safe and alone together?
This house—pink stucco
latticed with mold,
water bubbles in the streets
from storm drains. Asphalt cracks.
And on our screens
bad news unfurls—
War. Fire. Drought.
In my childhood room, you mouth me open.
I close my hands
over your shoulders
then remember driving
to pick up our daughters
while a story about “ecological grief”
played on NPR,
the summer after my mother died.
Outside: magnolia tree lashed with rain.
Tongue. Mouth. Hair.
How wrong is it now to take solace
in the ordinary?
We slide out of our clothes.
A hundred years from now
when the world churns on
without us, the bridge drowns,
braceleted with light.
And here we are, in another
winter of wrong
temperatures. I slip on
my mother’s coat, flash
its red silk lining, invisible skin.
How I wish I could fill its pockets
not with smoke or flood water. 

Stars and people and daffodils won’t last forever.
Hands down, forever will succumb to a single sensation,
one last heaven, one last shudder     
lost voice carried over the winds of the body, the canyons
of the hands in a shower, snow or warm? Last ashes
of satisfaction dance above an open mouth, teeth like light
in an emptied room, the wet music of the tongue.
Somebody will find the edge to all of humanity’s joy, a flood,
a punctuation will flood her with its certainty,
or them, or us, all at once, and that lonely breach
will ripple through, on and out, with indefatigable atoms.
Those asking hands never to slow their speeding ship     
one last starry daffodil excess will blow its soft dunes,
that lost voice, back, over everything that ever came
before. Until emptied out. And if you slow, if you slowly reach
across your own body until you feel it, too, even now?
You can come to an end, even now. It lasts, wanting to.

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Juliet waits for nightfall when Romeo will return.

Juliet: Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a waggoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.
Hood my unmann'd blood bating in my cheeks
With thy black mantle, till strange love grown bold
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night, come, Romeo, come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she brings news, and every tongue that speaks
But Romeo's name speaks heavenly eloquence.

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
                 Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
       the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
       recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
       Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
       of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
       what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
       We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
     No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
                 if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

Now exhale and repeat after me.

On days I’m alive,
A universe blooms in my lungs,
Joy finding home within a body
Once thought a legend, poured from
The cups of the ancestors.

In this country, Black futures are my reason,
Because our freedom is chiseled in the grooves
Of ancient stones. Older than gaslighting texts.

If we were made in his image, then call us by our name.

My light, a gentle lover, touches everything differently,
Inheriting the fire of stars. Crafting my form
With a tenderness reserved for deities,
While the air holds its breath in a moment of reverence
Gathered around me like a poem’s blanket, or
Love letters folded into my pocket since birth.

I am only invisible to those who see with mortal eyes.
But if you’re looking, find me like the solitary dandelion
Dancing in the gales, each gust a kiss from full lips.

The first one placed on my big forehead—
Just like my momma’s.
The next placed on my wide nose—
Just like her momma’s. 

There I will be navigating chaos, vibrancy,
Filth and fervor. Finding myself no longer a stranger
In the anthems of the living, a paper character sprung
From someone else’s imagination,
Cast adrift in the waters of absence and confusion.

I am a continent, known in the language of my foremothers and fathers
Yelling on the edge of forever until hope is truth:

We alive, beloved!

i read somewhere
that a group of ladybugs is called
          a loveliness. and i wonder
what the person who gave them
that name (surely someone of at least
              measurable humanity) knew,
or thought they did, about what love
—what kind, specifically—so embeds
            itself in a thing that the thing,
subsequently, becomes an embodiment
of that love: the way river breaks into current;
the way trees make forest, simply
             by standing closer to each other
than to anything else…

               …by which I mean: i need you
to tell me which of my black spots
             you find loveliest. which interruption
of my red feels most human
to the forest of your fingers; the current
            you river into touch
along my breaking skin.