is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
                                                                                                              I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
                               it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist’s appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist’s waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited I read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
—“Long Pig,” the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
—Aunt Consuelo’s voice—
not very loud or long.
I wasn’t at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn’t. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I—we—were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.

I said to myself: three days
and you’ll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
—I couldn’t look any higher—
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities—
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts—
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How—I didn’t know any
word for it—how “unlikely”. . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn’t?

The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.

Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.

I repeat “dead” aloud enough times for its meaning to loosen 

from sense. Once the word I repeat is no longer comprehensible, 

it begins to attack everything else I know.

Giorgio Agamben says devastation is one face of a Genius 

that exists inside us. The other face is creation.

The two sounds that begin and end “dead” echo in my ears. 

Then a third appears between them. The middle sound, between 

the coronal plosives of the letter d, is the ghost.

Agamben tells us that the Genius is within us only as long if 

we realize it does not belong to us. Just as existence does not.

Now I begin to voice only the ghost, and watch it ‘not appear.’

Is the narrow space between my Genius’s two faces 

where that ghost lives? When I listen for what will not appear, 

I hear my own voicelessness amplify. 

My hearing is most acute when I’m naked 

in front of the bedroom mirror.

I want voicelessness to create an echoing hollow 

inside every word I type.

I feel how listening to find disappearances makes my nipples erect. 

Disappearance is my new self-seduction.

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud
rises up silently like dark bread.

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can't see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child's feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.

^{Pain—has an Element of Blank—
                        —Emily Dickinson}

there is a herald a messenger a teacher’s aide
making proclamations 
about the ins and outs of the pupils’ bodies, the holes
the wounds, let’s quantify
the historical significance of your eczema
she says, waving lasers at my scaly elbows 
why use ordinary blood, she says, when you can use strange blood
why use blood in ordinary ways when you can use it in 
surprising ways!
when you can use blood in such a way that it makes you 
aware of just how weird and malleable
how goofy and ridiculous    how bizarre it is that our
bodies are made of the ugliest simplest things

************************************************

because in the end    the teacher’s aide says 
life is about words   you say a bunch of words 
and if you don’t like them you “cross them out” 
and say a bunch of new words
it’s kind of simple if you think about it (poetry!)
you use one kind of word
and not another
one kind of blood
and not another
one kind of blank
and not another 

************************************************

teacher’s aide sits us on the ground and “puts on her poetry hat” 
repeat after me 
“pain”, “blank”, “PAIN”, “BLANK”, “Pain?” “Blank?”
“painblankpainblankpainblank”
she makes us repeat the words until they are just sounds
“painblaaaaaankpainblaaaaaankpainblaaaaaank”
until they have no meaning anymore and then slowly she says
“Pain”…………………….”Blank”……………….”Pain”……………..”Blank”
she nurtures that pause so we can feel in our skin and bones how time is passing 
and she commands us to think about the relationship between “P” and “B”
between “ain” and “lank” 
because whether you know it or not
she says
you will think about the relationship between pain and blank
between ain and lank    for the rest of your lives 

************************************************

“painblank,” she says
“painblank painblank painblank”
the kids clap their hands, whooping 
“painblank! painblank! Painblank!”

************************************************

in unison we sing:
we have no future but ourselves
our infinite realms contain our past
all we will ever feel are
New Periods of Pain!  

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.

Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.

The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.

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.

I’m in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants

I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you’ll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them

If I can’t speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don’t care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don’t care if the books get wet?

We’ve been together seven years
& only now do I begin
clearing my throat to speak to you.

Little things I’ll give to you—
Till your fingers learn to press 
Gently 
On a loveliness;

Little things and new—
Till your fingers learn to hold
Love that’s fragile,
Love that’s old.

Why not a meadow?
Why not a little clearing and a stream
to wade in? Why not take our pants off,
a little respite from our partners
who couldn’t see us, who’d never see us
no matter what we did? What we did was wrong,
the way we did it. It was miraculous, 
it took hold long after
we trudged back to our spouses. 
So many years harboring a secret. 
Thank you for telling me 
about growing up in Queens, daddy’s 
milk truck skittering about Northern Boulevard 
looking for your favorite ice cream. 
And the darkness: how shades were drawn,
how your mother would never recover
from your father. How many of us 
have been stymied by those early dramas
until we married them? So many years, 
so many hungry years after. 
Thank you for the apricots in the mail,
thank you more for appearing at my door
with so little time left: no going back
to field our regrets. Old
as we are, you are here and now,
why not a meadow and a clearing?

^{translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid}

And all that remains for me is to follow a violet darkness
on soil where myths splinter and crack.
Yes, love was time, and it too
splintered and cracked
like the face of our country.

My share of the people
is the transit of their ghosts.

عتَمات بنفسجيّة

  
ولَيْسَ سِوى أَن أَتْبَعَ عَتَماتٍ بَنَفْسَجيّة
فَوْقَ تُرْبَةٍ تَتَشَقَّقُ فيها الأَساطير 
،أَجَلْ، كانَ الحُبُّ زَمَناً وتَشَقَّقَ، هو الآخَرُ 
مِثْلَ وَجْهِ بلادِنا

.حِصَّتي مِنَ النّاس عُبورُ أَشْباحِهِم

^{An original poem written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress.}

There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.

There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.

There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the air
like sheets of rain,
where love of the many
swallows hatred of the few.

There’s a poem in Charlottesville
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
tight round the wrist of night
where men so white they gleam blue—
seem like statues
where men heap that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather Heyer
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.

There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward and aglow.

There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
where streets swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is now so common
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.

There’s a poem in Los Angeles
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
where a single mother swelters
in a windowless classroom, teaching
black and brown students in Watts
to spell out their thoughts
so her daughter might write
this poem for you.             

There's a lyric in California
where thousands of students march for blocks,
undocumented and unafraid;
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope is like a stubborn
ship gripping a dock,
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a dream.

How could this not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American lyric to write—
a poem by the people, the poor,
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the immigrant,
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented and undeterred,
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
the white, the trans,
the ally to all of the above
and more?

Tyrants fear the poet.
Now that we know it
we can’t blow it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below it.       

Hope—
we must bestow it
like a wick in the poet
so it can grow, lit,
bringing with it
stories to rewrite—
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history written that need not be repeated
a nation composed but not yet completed.

There’s a poem in this place—
a poem in America
a poet in every American
who rewrites this nation, who tells
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every American
who sees that our poem penned
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.

There’s a place where this poem dwells—
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write an American lyric
we are just beginning to tell.