In 1965 there were two bands in the United States called "The Warlocks", one in New York and one in California; each was oblivious to the existence of the other and both changed their names before the end of the year – the west coast band to "The Grateful Dead" and the east coast band to "The Velvet Underground".

Her gaze upsets stone fences
Sheep browse woods crosshatched with her
Script; puzzled bleating over leaf litter, nosing after swards they
Grazed before, well-drop, time-lapse, silver salt, sparged
Malt. Raise spirit from sweet, apply to bloodstream, then
Look again. She's astride one, soft stink of unwashed
Fleece, where did these merinos wander from? I was down
The hill and heard them, Caldwell's flock, or Baker's: She
Never left, and bade them stay

steel curved without tension
into dissolving light that
tunneled under town

a rough disking, planted
to green sweetened by
veins of silver under
coppery silt, smells of
water-tower tar

BLACK BOOKS

I. Jan 2009 Milbridge to pruning/nica Feb. through to New York for Passover
II. Marlboro May 2009 down to Philly & Alabama/Georgia summer up to Maine and picking season
III. Picking season 2009 down to Georgia w/Julian – caroling tour and bus up to NYC Jan 2010
IV. Charleston visit end of Jan 2010 through pruning season to Portland Easter early April 2010
V. Weare preparing nicaward to Cambridge, NYC lullaby test run
VI. Manahatta end of lullaby prototype tour Aug 2010 w/Jules & Roudy on through apple harvest, lullabying w/J. & Robbie, & NY/New England yo-yo ending in NYC 2nd-to-last week of March 2011 Holiday Surprise
VII. NYC Feb 2011 for Keri & Joe's wedding/ March for Holiday Surprise on through Massachusetts time w/Jules & R. and June Maine rambles till Indian Island w/Seth & Taylor
VIII. June 2011 Mainey rambles before entering money labor (Henry, Hugh, apples) through good postappling back to Maine and Tivoli caroling preparations
IX. Tivoli & NYC late Nov 2011 caroling that Dec, Maine Christmas, Ch'field, back to NYC 2 weeks in January, back to Ch'field then pruning March 2012

mexican blanket round her in
charry dirts. Ripe weeds seeding, crushed,
give chlorophyll breaths like a
mouth; I is a place I go
without you. Hard to
site this, skull-garlands rattling, my
body dancing on my body.

Young Master I. "Paddy Fermor" Ludders at an interfarc station in Stamboul, long ago

Δευ, Μάιος 10, 2004 12:21 pm
High spirits and a feeling of being out of touch with many people lead me to attempt a Marek/Jason-style "Dear Boxholder" narrative communication. You should read it as if I'd been sending such things all along, but you weren't ever getting them on account of some technical problem. Nor should you be alarmed if such technical problems recur in future.
************************
       The express bus from Alexandroupoli came to a final stop in the late afternoon drizzle of a huge dystopic bus-station complex outside of Istanbul and the charming community of its passengers immediately dissolved: the two Thracian Turks and the Iraqi Kurd and the Greek language that had afforded us our sweet temporary friendship – all vanished; to be replaced, quite unsatisfactorily, by a nightmare of tangled transportation networks and an incomprehensible mediating language. The two beautiful young Japanese women also vanished, but not till after one of them had turned herself into a rockstar by suddenly producing a guitar-case as she disembarked; the old expatriate Korean man who had accompanied the other – and whom I had imagined to be her father? teacher? lover? – I saw wandering away into the crowds without her, breaking my illusions: their relationship had apparently been as fleeting as mine with the Kurd.
       This interesting old Korean man had lived in Istanbul for some years and had periodically turned in his seat throughout the course of the bus ride to give me advice, in his thin English, on my visit to The City; so I caught up to him in the confusion of the station to ask how I should get downtown and where would I find a cheap hotel. He turned his tired eyes and, recognizing me, began to speak, gesticulating vaguely this way and that: but I could pick out only a very few words – "pension," "bazaar," "ichiban" – for he spoke not in English but in Japanese, the language of his many hours' commerce with the young woman. Not wanting to embarrass him by pointing out his mistake, I listened for some thirty seconds, nodding politely; when he'd finished I said thank you and goodbye and we parted. I found my way to an ATM machine and withdrew 450 million Turkish Lira from my Bank of New Hampshire account and bought a map of Istanbul (1 million). I then approached a man and had an unexpectedly difficult time, without "language", formulating the question "Where on this map are we?" When he finally came to understand the puzzling charade, my interlocutor responded by indicating, quickly and gracefully, that we were in fact outside of the bounds of the map; so I bought a subway token (1 million), determined cartographically which track to take, and in subterranean blindness passed under the ancient crumbling span of battlemented Byzantine walls and into The City they compassed.
       There followed two weeks of happy ambulatory investigation

cream of pulled pint, pulled
shot, a surface
effect. I gobble your
softnesses, oak tree; I
kiss all your branches dear beech dear
pecan! Where God becomes self-conscious, there
I am. Have I always loved
the wobbly; did the trains used to go
there; when did you move
thence; nineteen seventy-five. Before I was born
of my mother, though she'd given her first
that August. September follows
me. When certain cheeses age their flesh
darkens and they develop
delicious crystalline flecks, butterflies all so
peaceful in Bruce's yard, fireflies flickering
about us: books can only
moulder but maybe
a bit of sacred statuary rests with
us, breathing.

thumb scad, the
blood creeps out and all the rest
is as it was not. Time is represented
by sunlight. Moving into the shade with
you, did you get all my letters? I asked for
sparkling water. Reading them with some delicious
coffee: sparged malts, running up and down
stairs. Phosphorescent bugs like
stars. Grime of dead man's house a
comfort worth keeping.

salts gloving them, their
wiry lengths stretch, buckle,
bend, I'm
subjected to tests,
object to their
amputation

glassy breadths can't
see, one or the
Other

breathing into the
hollow behind your breasts

Young Zack (Jonathan Richman)

Joseph Sikes & Carrie Losneck

Uncle Ian et al.

Sass & Zack

Avah & Owen

Fabiola & Esteban

Easter, 2012

[W. Benjamin: Every date from the sixteenth century trails purple after it. Those of the nineteenth century are only now receiving their physiognomy.]

Lilac incipience, quince bush blushing, I am
In this; No. Weare, 1956, Colburn's store; Armand and
Marcy's; lemons & eggs. An ash so big it can't but lift
One's thoughts to God. This run of Piscataquog shallows was
A millpond in living memory. Animate
The dust: tiny mammals with Algonkian names.

BANGALORE 1875

Before the myth. Sue Dickinson to the Springfield DAILY REPUBLICAN, for publication 18 May 1886.

The death of Miss Emily
E. Dickinson, daughter of the
late Edward Dickinson,
at Amherst on Saturday last
makes another sad inroad
upon the small circle so long
occupying the old family mansion.
It was for a long generation over-
looked by death, and one in
passing in and out there, could
but think of old fashioned times,
when parents and children
grew up to and passed maturity
together, in lives of singular
uneventfulness, unmarked by
sad or joyous crises. Very few in the
village knew Miss Emily per-
sonally, except among the older
inhabitants, although the fact
of her seclusion and intellectual
brilliancy was one of the familiar
Amherst traditions. There are many homes
among the classes into which
her treasures of fruit and
flowers and almost ambrosial
dishes for the sick and well
were constantly sent, that will
forever miss those dainty traces
of her unselfish devotion and be
moved afresh that she screened
herself from closer acquaintance.
As she passed on in life, her
sensitive nature shrank from much
personal contact with the world,
and more and more she turned
to her own large wealth of
individual resources, for companion-
ship – sitting henceforth, as some
one said of her, "In the light of
her own fire". Not disappointed
with the world, not an invalid
till within the past two years – not from
any lack of all embracing love,
and sympathy – not because she
was insufficient for any mental
work, or social career, her en-
dowments being so exceptional,
but the "mesh of her soul" as
Browning calls the body, was too
rare, and the sacred quiet of her
own home proved the native at-
mosphere for her worth and
work. All that must be inviolate.
One can only speak of
"Duties beautifully done" – of her
gentle tillage of the rare flowers
filling her conservatory, into
which, like the heavenly Paradise,
entered nothing that could
defile, and which was ever
abloom in frost or sunshine, so
well she knew her chemistries –
of her gentle tenderness to all
in the home circle – her gentle-
woman's grace, and courtesy to
all who served in house, and
grounds – of her quick rich re-
sponse to all who rejoiced, or
suffered at home, or among her
wide circle of friends the world
over. This side of her nature was
to her, the real side – this, the
entity in which she rested, so
simple and strong was her instinct
that a woman's hearth-stone is
her shrine. Her talk and her
writings, were like no one else,
and although she never published
a line, now and then some en-
thusiastic literary friend, would
turn love to larceny, and cause
a few verses surreptitiously obtained,
to be printed. Thus, and through
other natural ways, many saw
and admired her verses, and
in consequence frequently
notable persons paid her visits,
hoping to overcome the protest
of her own nature and gain a
promise of occasional contri-
butions at least to various
magazines. She withstood
the fascinations of Helen Jackson
who earnestly sought her
co-operation in a novel in
the "No Name Series", although
one little poem strayed in
some way into the volume
of verses in that edition.
Her pages would illy have
fitted even so attractive a
story as "Mercy Philbrick's
Choice", unwilling as the
public are to believe she
had no part in it: "Her
wagon was hitched to a star"
and who could ride or write
with such a voyager.
A Damascus blade
gleaming, and glancing
in the sun was her wit.
Her swift poetic rapture
like the long glistening
note of a bird one hears
in the woods in June at high noon,
but never can see. Like
a magician she caught
the shadowy apparitions of
her brain and tossed them
in startling picturesqeness
to her friends, who charmed
with their simplicity and
homeliness, as well as pro-
fundity, fretted that she
had so easily made palpable,
the tantalizing fancies forever
eluding their bungling
fettered grasp. So intimate
and passionate, her love of
Nature, she seemed herself a part
of the high March sky – the
Summer day and bird call.
Keen and eclectic in her
literary tastes, she sifted
Libraries to Shakespeare and
Browning – quick as lightning
in her intuitions, and analyses,
she seized the kernel in-
stantly, almost impatient
of the fewest words by which
She must make her revelation.
So her life was rich, and
all aglow with God and
immortality – with no creed –
no formulated faith, hardly
knowing the names of dogmas
she walked this life, with
the gentleness and reverence
of old saints, with the firm
step of martyrs who sing
while they suffer. How better
note the flight of this "Soul
of fire in a shell of pearl"
than by her own breathings
Morns like these, we parted
Noons like these, she rose.
Fluttering first, then firmer
To her fair repose.

May I trouble you dear
Sam to pardon untidyness of
this, for I am weary and sick.
Also to return this.
As ever yours – S.H.D

Will you have "gentlewoman"
printed as one word? not
with a hyphen –

Retour de la pêche aux huîtres

Bivalve women,
You gave me bones
And twisted this from
Sally-rods & withy. Fishers
Of men. Proud hips and
Bellies swallow us, belie a
Fictive swarm, the sunlit
World before, trees,
Shore and seas, the islands
Into sky. Thin vision-tissue, gently
Torn – that lighthouse, and the glare
Off sleek and swollen
Waves, white light of empty God
Behind the scene.