Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate.

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

It is really something when a kid who has a hard time becomes a kid who’s having a good time in no small part thanks to you throwing that kid in the air again and again on a mile long walk home from the Indian joint as her mom looks sideways at you like you don’t need to keep doing this because you’re pouring with sweat and breathing a little bit now you’re getting a good workout but because the kid laughs like a horse up there laughs like a kangaroo beating her wings against the light because she laughs like a happy little kid and when coming down and grabbing your forearm to brace herself for the time when you will drop her which you don’t and slides her hand into yours as she says for the fortieth time the fiftieth time inexhaustible her delight again again again and again and you say give me til the redbud tree or give me til the persimmon tree because she knows the trees and so quiet you almost can’t hear through her giggles she says ok til the next tree when she explodes howling yanking your arm from the socket again again all the wolves and mourning doves flying from her tiny throat and you throw her so high she lives up there in the tree for a minute she notices the ants organizing on the bark and a bumblebee carousing the little unripe persimmon in its beret she laughs and laughs as she hovers up there like a bumblebee like a hummingbird up there giggling in the light like a giddy little girl up there the world knows how to love.

Too soon some
           of we became
                       they

None of us
           wished this
                       for ourselves

Yet some
           wished the rest
                       less

Moved to move
           many away
                       from the most

Chose to nominate
           the preterite
                       out of our midst

And the song of agreement
           went out from amongst
                       us went wrong

In the trying
           of times
                       trials multiplied

The darkening colors
           of closing time shaded
                       our prospect

But ours was a music
           of consensus could it
                       only live

In a dissolute time
           ours was a resolution
                       were it allowed to sound

The profound space
           of ourselves
                       could it but breathe

In the free air of
           our improvisings
                       was community

Airing our differences
           to the rhythms of 
                       deep time

As deep listening 
           to the welling waves
                       of thought

Transposes into keys
           to the kingdom
                       registers of faith

We shall gather
           in the rest
                       we shall gather by the river

Scoundrel time
           is not to be
                       our time

We play 
           against it and are called
                       free

                                            ^{… dreadful was the din 
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now 
With complicated monsters … —“Paradise Lost,” Book X}

The snow had buried Monument
                                      *
Where the Teslas spun their burnished wheels
                                      *
& the twice-dead Confederates ghost their plots
                                      *
& Lee & Stonewall dismembered still sprawl,
                                      *
Their bubble-wrapped limbs akimbo
                                      *
In their warehouse crates, & they wait to be 
                                      *
ensorcelled back to bespoken life.
                                      *
One hundred miles north the oligarchs clap,
                                      *
All of them turned to hissing serpents
                                      *
Seething & cat-cradling the Rotunda floor,
                                      *
Their darkling Prince droning on & on.
                                      *
They are stench & slither, their cobra-heads rear.
                                      *          
They own us now. They python-swallow 
                                      *
Each & everyone. Swallow us whole.