All these years I overlooked them in the racket of the rest, this symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air — tiny acid-factories dissolving salt from living rocks and eating them.
The day was cloudy. No one could come to a decision; a light wind was blowing. ‘Not a north-easter, the sirocco,’ someone said. A few slender cypresses nailed to the slope, and, beyond, the sea grey with shining pools. The soldiers presented arms as it began to drizzle. ‘Not a north-easter, the sirocco,’ was the only decision heard. And yet we knew that by the following dawn nothing would be left to us, neither the woman drinking sleep at our side
A 29-year-old stewardess fell ... to her death tonight when she was swept through an emergency door that sud- denly sprang open ... The body ... was found ... three hours after the accident. —New York Times
Myths of the landscape— the sun going down in the mouths of the furnaces, the fires banked and cooling, ticking into dark, here and there the sudden flaring into roses, then the light across the long factory of the field, the split and rusted castings, across the low slant tin roofs of the buildings, across fallow and tar and burnt potato ground. . . . Everything a little still on fire, in sunlight, then smoke, then cinder, then the milling back to earth, rich earth, the silica of ash. The times I can taste the iron in the air, the gray wash like exhaust, smell the burn-off,
Down the road Up the hill Into the house Over the wall Under the bed After the fact By the way Out of the woods Behind the times In front of the door Between the lines Along the path
Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow, How can thine heart be full of the spring? A thousand summers are over and dead. What hast thou found in the spring to follow? What hast thou found in thine heart to sing? What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?
O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow, Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south, The soft south whither thine heart is set? Shall not the grief of the old time follow? Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth? Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?
Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, One look I but gave which your dear eyes return’d with a look I shall never forget, One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground, Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, Till late in the night reliev’d to the place at last again I made my way, Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding,) Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field spreading, Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in my hands, Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade—not a tear, not a word, Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier, As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole,
Midmorning like a deserted room, apparition Of armoire and table weights, Oblongs of flat light, the rosy eyelids of lovers Raised in their ghostly insurrection, Decay in the compassed corners beating its black wings, Late June and the lilac just ajar.
Where the deer trail sinks down through the shadows of blue spruce,
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