Linnaeus in Lapland

The meadow yielded thirteen bales an acre.
“Was that a record?” I asked one of the experts.
“It must have been a record. When was the last time
you manured that meadow? Eighteen eighty-one?”
Yet it is beautiful, whether mowed or not,
After its saddest harvest, stubble bristled
sparsely, yet the stalks stood up like Christians.
Now that the second crop is coming in,

Translated from the Japanese

The square in the square in the square in the square in the square.
The square circle of the square circular motion of the square circular motion.
The person who sees through the smell of the soap of the blood vessels that the soap passes through.
The earth made in imitation of the globe made in imitation of the earth.
Castrated socks. (Her name was words)
Anemia cells. your expression is also like the legs of a sparrow.
The enormous weight that drives itself toward the diagonal of the parallelogram.

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

I.

Stars among
corn fields
above fences
the crows
line like
darkness points,
spread over the earth

And the place
was water

Fish
fowl
flood
Water lily mud
My life

in the leaves and on water

1778-1830 Between the wet trees and the sorry steeple,
Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,

Equisetum, horsetail, railway weed
Laid down in the unconscious of the hills;
Three hundred million years still buried

In this hair-soft surviving growth that kills
Everything in the glorious garden except itself,
That thrives on starvation, and distils

Black diamonds, the carboniferous shelf —
That was life before our animals,

In Golden Gate Park that day
a man and his wife were coming along
thru the enormous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
He was wearing green suspenders
and carrying an old beat-up flute
in one hand
while his wife had a bunch of grapes

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;
Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd
By ear industrious, and attention meet:
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.