WORK
POEMS IN VERSE 

by
CURT HOPKINS

A THESIS
Presented to the Department of English 

and the Honors College of the University of Oregon 
in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts

March 1991



ii



* 1991 Curt Hopkins



iv

An Abstract of the Thesis of
Curt Hopkins for the degree of Bachelor of Arts 
in the Department of English to be taken March 1991 
Title: WORK, POEMS IN VERSE

Approved:
Prot. *Robert Grin

The vital link between modern poetry and the fixed- 
form tradition it both comes from and reacts against, in 
both cases a source of strength, has been lost as the years 
intervene and separate each generation of poets further from 
it than the previous. The great Modernist poets wrestled 
with that tradition, whether to reinvigorate it, as Wilfred 
Owen, or to break and change it, like T.S. Eliot and that 
wrestling, that tension and challenge is the knot, the seed 
of creation. It is with that in mind, not to copy it in some 
weak-kneed nostalgia, that I have approached this manuscript 

as I have.
I also took this tack for my own personal benefit. It 

was for me the clearest, most direct way to a mastery of the 
tools of poetry; compression, euphony, meter and rhythm, 
alliteration, and all the types of rhymes. I can see myself 
moving into more self-determined forms based on a command of 
these tools, a knowledge of fixed-forms, and the growing 

needs of my own poetic voice,



V

THANKS TO FRANCIE COGAN, ROBERT GRUDIN, SUSAN 
JACOBSON, STEVE MCQUIDDY, JOHN HAISLIP, SCOTT 
TAYLOR, ED BEARDSLEY, MIKE WINCKLER, ELIZABETH 
BICKFORD, RICHARD, MAXINE, AND KEVIN HOPKINS, 
ELIOT ROCKETT, AND CAPTAIN NUTTY

’’Let me borrow five bucks til Monday."



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION...................................... x
POEMS....................................................................................................................................................................... ....

SONNETS.................................................. .
GREATNESS............................................
MAIREAD FARRELL.................................... .
THE LAUNDRESS...................................... .
ORPHEUS..............................................

Hades's Question.............................. 17

Orpheus's Reply............................... 18

THE EXPATRIATE..................................... 19
CASSANDRA...........................................2 0

Apollo'S Gift................................. 20

Agememnon' s Gift.............................. 21
Clytemnestra's Gift........................... 22

SEX.................................................23
THE BALTIC......................................... 24
POTHOS............................................. 25
SACROMONTE......................................... 26

The Wedding................................... 26
Pilar......................................... 27
Emilio........................................ 28

. . .29Gabriel.....................................
Manolin
Belen 31



. ViiChemistry and Spirit.......................... 3 2
TWO LONGER POEMS..........................................

STUDY OF A WOMAN................................... 34
THE ALB............................................. .

Syria..... .................................... 37
Adam and Christ............................... 4 0
The Desert Circle............................. 42

JACKSONVILLE: A NARRATIVE POEM IN PROGRESS...............47
BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................88



INTRODUCTION



2I

This thesis is a collection of poems in metrical verse. 
Included are sonnets, blank verse, rhymed stanzaic verse, 
and selections from a long narrative poem in different 
meters and rhyme schemes. My reason for choosing to write in 
metrical verse instead of free verse is my belief that the 
latter is no longer capable of responding poetically to the 
needs of either the writer or the reader. Contemporary free 
verse is the short lyric. The calcified canon of rules for 
the construction of this lyric are so limiting that they act 
as a form of poetic censorship. Coupled to this the lack of 
concern with euphony, compression and rhythm in contemporary 
poetry assured me that I would have to look elsewhere to 
find the tools for responsive creation.

I looked to those poets whom I most admired and tried 
to understand how they came to write as they did. I looked 
at T.S. Eliot, Richard Hugo, and Dylan Thomas. All three of 
these poets had one thing in common: that, though they did 
not write the great body of their work in fixed form, they 
quite obviously had a tremendous familiarity with it. They 
had learned fixed form and had thereupon modulated it 
according to the exigencies of their verse. I decided that 
the way to gain those tools I needed was to write a series 
of poems in fixed form and in metrical verse.



3

II

The original plan for this thesis was a sonnet cycle. 
My first fifteen or twenty sonnets were, however, narrative. 
I altered that original plan when I discovered what was 
wrong with what I was trying to do. It was impossible for me 
at first to carry a narrative line in the sonnet form. I was 
laboring intensely at the basic principles of the sonnet: 
meter, rhyme, and the demanding turns of the image or 
metaphor to its final resolution. I was attempting to deal 
with the Orpheus and Eurydice myth on a narrative level 
through the sonnet and set in gypsy Spain, too grand a task 
at that time. What I have done instead is a corona of 
sonnets, called Sacromonte, which treat the Gypsies of the 
Grenadine barrio where I lived on both a social and a 
metaphysical level. This took care of my need for both the 
sonnet and for that particular social, physical and symbolic 
setting. Though there are other sonnets included, I consider 
this corona my highest achievement so far with that form.

The narrative I have carried in a form best suited for 
it: the long poem in varying meters. It is giving me a 
chance to be expansive, to experiment with character and 
meter, to use native information (it is set in Jacksonville, 
Oregon) , and to try my hand at a long, sustained plot. 
Having written a number of plays previously sharpened my 
sense of what is and is not necessary in a narrative.



4

III

The thematic content of this body of poetry is 
difficult to determine, it is only after a poet has been 
writing for most of a lifetime that it is really worthwhile 
to try to determine what constructs of ideas govern him or 
her. If I were to isolate two prospective themes, I suppose 
they would be pothos and sex. Pothos is a Greek word used by 
historians of Alexander the Great to describe his superhuman 
longing to go beyond. This is the theme of The Alb. It is 
also one of the governing ideas of the Jacksonville 
narrative. The other, sex, concerns itself with the almost 
genetic, evolutionary, and spiritual responsibility to those 
who have gone before us and the tension that creates with 
the individual who seeks freedom. This is the governing idea 
of the Sacromonte corona.

There are some themes I avoid. Romantic love, though it 
is important in my life, has no place in my verse, at least 
not at this point in my life. There is very little 
perspective or context for it where it will not instantly be 
subsumed into the cheap system of love literature. Topical 
political subjects, standing outside of any complete system, 
outside of any frame of understanding, are unpleasant to me. 
I also feel a personal repugnance for the cheap landscape- 
as-emotional-metaphor poetry with which the contemporary 
short lyric is so bound up. This type of a landscape is just 



5the opposite of the Byronic landscape, it is inescapably 
personal and domestic: little. Landscape-as-metaphor in 
general is a valid way of thinking poetically and I myself 
use it in Sacromonte. I avoid, however, its connection with 
domesticity. Those themes, love, contemporary politics, and 
land, remain, due to lack of interest, taste, and skill 
level, outside of my repertoire of subjects for verse.

Another main reason for avoiding the aforementioned 
subjects is their cliched status in the mind of the reader. 
Waving the flag of The Home or Politics or Love is such a 
familiar action that it is immediately assigned in the 
reader*s mind to a worn path leading to the river of 
forgetfulness.

IV

Although ideally there are no real restrictions on my 
audience, it would be futile to pretend there are not when 
there are. It is tempting to say that the poems will appeal 
to the educated reader. However, having been around the so- 
called "educated" public for five years, that seems like an 
absurd statement. I will say that it is the sensitive 
reader, that is, the insightful reader who is receptive to 
both beauty and ugliness, who will be the readiest to read 
my poems. In the United States it is believed, far too 
readily, that these people are found mostly in or as 
graduates of academic institutions. Academic institutions



are becoming more and more mere vocational schools and les^ 

and less places where the pursuit of truth is a focus. 
Therefore, the academic institution is not the exclusive 
font of the audience of poetry. I believe that it is high 
time to get beyond the mindset of intellectual geography in 
regard to artistic audience. With the right approach I 
believe that poetry can be reintroduced to the public 
domain. One need only to look back to the heyday of the 
union socialist to find a time where the worker and the 
artist were not contradictory terms. John Dos Passes and 
Carl Sandburg were read by the steel worker and the 
professor. The art of Kaethe Kolvitz and Frans Masereel was 
as well known to the German and Belgian factory hand as to 
the instructor at the Institute of Art. With the slightest 
bit of initiative the publisher might find out that the 
working men and women of this country do not have as poor an 
opinion of their own intellectual ability and artistic 
sensibilities as the publisher does. The advent of 
television and convenience technology has, admittedly, done 
more to rob the people of their self-sufficiency, 
intellectually as well as spiritually, than any tyrant 
could.

As to whether the vocabulary of my verse might serve to 
pare down my audience I would say that of course both the 
vocabulary and the mere label of poetry (read: pretentious, 
incomprehensible, effeminate, superfluous) will limit its 
readership. It would be ridiculous, however, to maintain 



that this will happen mostly among the non-academic readers, 
I know personally many educated people who read the word 
poetry as one or more of the above. It is the quality of the 
artist and the quality of the reader, and not his or her 
social and economic station, that determines whether or not 
a given work of art will be appealing.

It is within this context that I am writing my verse. 
It is for someone with a heightened awareness of his or her 
spiritual place in the world, a sensitivity to both imagery 
and to the sensual texture of words, and a predilection to 
view the world as existing in a field where reality and 
imagination, form and content, signifier and signified, all 
cease functioning at the instant of the creation or 
apprehension (also really a form of creating). If this 
capacity is one that requires education (and it is not) it 
is a cultural and not an intellectual or academic education. 
In the United States these cultural tools with which the 
"common" people validate their lives have been all but lost, 
willingly traded in for the promise of ease, offered up 
through the Moloch of the media after the Second World War. 
One of the duties of the artist in this country is to 
reawaken the people to the fact that those tools were never 
actually taken away, that they were merely left to disuse 
and can be, with application, used again.

The appreciation of beauty is largely non- 
intellectual. How many degrees are necessary to appreciate 
the beauty of a sunset? Alexandra, who owns the store with



8the green awning in the Sacromonte, has no more than a 
grammar school education and, as I recall, she seemed to 
have no real problem, in fact she was one of the most 
accomplished and devoted Appreciators of Sunsets that I have 
ever known. When a logger in Oakridge comes to the Sportsman 
to have a beer after work does he ask someone with education 
to help him appreciate the emotional efficacy of Johnny 
Cash's ’’Give My Love To Rose" when it comes on the radio? It 
is a matter of prejudice, not education, that needs to be 
overcome in order to broaden the audience for poetry.

V

I have been influenced, in one way or another, by 
everything I have read. The bad and mediocre poets have 
warned me away from cliches and made me aware of the 
necessity for compression and rhythm. Good poets have helped 
me toward an understanding of euphony, the intricacies of 
meter, the value of my own life, and the necessity to say 
something important with one's verse.

I would like to speak specifically about two groups of 
poets. The first, from whom I learned tangible lessons about 
the techniques of poetry, are T.S. Eliot, Richard Hugo, 
Dylan Thomas, and Federico Garcia Lorca. The second, from 
whom I gained concepts and tools for making sense of my 
world and my role in it, is made up of Walt Whitman, 
Robinson Jeffers, and Nikos Kazantzakis.



■ 9In Spanish poetry rhyme is easily achieved. So modern 
Spanish poets sought other devices. The device Lorca used so 
well was assonance. It was assonance, after rhythm and 
rhyme, that I worked on. it was Lorca who influenced me 
toward an already existing goal: Spain. Through him, through 
his volumes of poetry Poema del Cante Jondo and Romancero 
Gitano, I developed my interest in the gypsy and gained 
additional material for a spiritual geography.

Dylan Thomas influenced my verse through both his 
alliterative tendency and his opulence. I let myself go more 
than I might have, on sound in general and alliteration in 
particular, because of the rich, muscular vibrancy of his 
verse. Through Thomas in particular I came to the 
realization that only through the study and practice of 
fixed form would I be able to achieve such an ungodly but 
controlled superabundance of language. He was also 
responsible in part for my practice of allowing sound to 
always win when the struggle is with sense. I learned to 
trust my subconscious urges within poetic matrix.

This is something underscored by Richard Hugo in both 
his poetry and in his book of essays called The Triggering 
Town. He was also very indebted to fixed form, despite his 
rarely writing in it. He is very renown for his excellent 
rhythmic sense. He also let me know that my life was 

valuable.
Through T.S. Eliot I became aware of how off-rhyme and 

internal rhyme can create a music that seems to rise up out 



10of the poem while defying any attempts to isolate its 
origin. This is especially evident in the poem Ash 
Wednesday. Eliot served to underscore the influence of Lorca 
in that way.

VI

There is really not much perspective for me to 
determine what is "unique” in my verse, as though novelty 
were a prerequisite for worthwhile art. Everything I do 
shall be mine by virtue of its merely being held within the 
context of my consciousness. J.L. Borges examines this in 
depth in his "story” "Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote." 
My consciousness, with its intricacy of interrelationships, 
influences, and sensibility, will turn anything that it 
touches into something different than it was before.

If I had to note the aspects of my verse that are 
different than the common run, aside from the metrical 
nature itself and its relative wealth of sound, I would have 
to insist them too numerous to mention. I can, however, 
speak of one aspect that I believe takes poetry one step 
further on or, if you will, adds one more tool to poetic 
creation, if a sensibility can be considered a tool, and 
that is the hegemony of sound. Without sacrificing meaning, 
though I believe strongly that the world will not tolerate a 



lack of meaning and that all vacuums are filled, I have and 
will continue to take, sound to more vibrant and muscular 
extremes. Most of the value of my verse will lie, however, 
not in its "innovation," that soft and flashy goal of so 
many poets, but in its human timelessness. I do not worship 
the old forms for some supposed inherent superiority or in 
sheer awe of their authority. The sonnet is no more noble 
than a screwdriver. I hope, through mastering fixed form 
verse, to abstract, like Cezanne, those truest forms, those 
enduring qualities, that will endure. If that sounds too 
Platonic, well, "I mock Plotinus's thought And cry in 
Plato’s teeth, Life and death were not, Til man made up the 
whole."



12

POEMS



13

SONNETS



14

GREATNESS

The coal of greatness raises terrible winds, 
our bones a living grate to hold the coal, 
and, snapping taut, the mortal sail, our skin, 
must hold along that sinewed seam, the soul. 
The force that first rebelled against the lack, 
that turned the stars upon their elemental poles, 
is that which burns along our sugared track 
and lights the mouths of gesture in our skulls. 
The starry magnitude within the breast 
begs doors be blown apart that light might pour 
into the dark and wriggling world, the nest 
explode with eagles, singing as they soar. 
Across my voice that eagle wind has blown 
its burning flint, its raw, essential stone.



15

MAIREAD FARRELL

Gibraltar never grieves but gathers light, 
its streets like open veins of airy fire. 
She crossed its burning lintel from the night, 
within her bones a darkly dreaming choir. 
The light that struck her folded back across 
her face and shoulders. Wings, their edges clear 
as burning liquor, bright and cold as frost, 
shot their blazing arcs in fierce career. 
Gibraltar's sun sent light to give her wings 
but still the darkly singing choir dreamed; 
between the bolts an Irish shadow lingered, 
ancient dark of faces, ancient stream. 
The blaze is gone, the ancient darkness said,
God have mercy. Mairead Farrell * s dead.



16

THE LAUNDRESS

Throughout the quiet day, the lion's cage, 
the washerwoman looks with savage eyes 
to where the blue is senseless, meaning skies 
revolve in endless thrall from age to age. 
Desire sought the timid world's mouth 
but found a promise only, cold and weak, 
the kind of promise stammered by the meek 
when banks of fire threaten from the south. 
This is not a petty absence, ache 
of meat and words, or lack of coins and dust: 
this world's only made to suit the just; 
it's never kissed those thousand fires awake. 
But out beyond the ringing world, desire 
resolves itself in fierce symphonic fire.



17

ORPHEUS 
Hades’s Question

Orfeo! Boy, you carry song that reigns 
within your veins like kings with dreaming crowns 
carry down a thousand towns of pain 
that life of bone that bears the blood of sound. 
Your song is flag and flown through breathing skulls 
that, nation-driven, carry home its tears 
like symbolled shell to rock by crying gulls, 
that godlike urge returned at last to fear, 
but born enthroned in echo, bound to rise 
in private towered tongues, in angry skin, 
beside the dying cooking fire, in cries, 
in women’s eyes, in men, their broken limbs. 
So why, when wheat is echoed in the bread, 
descend to cry for straw among the dead?



18

ORPHEUS 
Orpheus’s Reply

That we who now are two were one at dawn 
is known to every king and every serf; 
the jealous hands of giants lift us torn, 
we scratched like leaves against the door of birth. 
We threw ourselves like voices down the dark, 
like drumming thunder hunts the flashing seam; 
at issue's moment voice and speaker part, 
we stood like slate although the world was green. 
Now some are seeking birth again, or death, 
with trembling eyes of honey, mouths of salt, 
but others feel a magnet in their breast, 
along their tongue they feel the current's call. 
Above, I felt the blinded world list; 
the vault of heaven turns inside our kiss.



19

THE EXPATRIATE

So long ago, it seems, the truth was broke 
and lifted from my mouth. Its jagged mount 
went rust and bitter. Absence made me choke 
and speech ran sterile up the rootless fount. 
I felt my words turn tool to every thought, 
the two together formed a bright machine, 
efficient, hard, it rendered what it caught, 
the blooming vine to ash to match my mean.
But what if one should come whose blood were hard 
as words? Whose mouth were shut with sun, a wall 
within the flooded tongue? If dealt the card 
of anger could my bones endure its call?
I would not speak but for a vagrant truth 
my ghosted jaw let rise up through its roof.



20

CASSANDRA
Apollo's Gift

To pay you for the rape he sent the snake, 
as though it weren't enough to know the god, 
the snake again, to kiss your ears awake, 
you knew the raven's terror when it cawed. 
They called this theft of blood a girl's wish, 
a fancy, given shape by deep desire, 
but this you kept, the torn-up slip, and this, 
the blood medallion: a cry from tower to spire. 
You walked the howling colonnade of tears 
and in the wind you felt the spit again, 
you tasted salt and saw a field of spears; 
the starward-growing, sea-born tower's end. 
From stone to stone your people praised the wind 
They robbed your pregnant mouth to hide their sin.



21

CASSANDRA
Agememnon’s Gift

The ocean, where it bends to shining verge, 
horizoned gate of day’s decisive turn, 
diurnal juncture poised at final urge, 
had said that night should be a black that burns. 
At midnight iron keels broke the stones, 
the shore went up in torches, drowning stars. 
He brought the burning beach to scorch the bones 
your people kept ashamed beneath their scars. 
The horse was gift enough to end your wait, 
to end the blood and bronze that fed your fears, 
to break the silver gates again, to end 
the salt of seconds, sown these seven years. 
Your broken people rowed his galley home 
matching, salt for salt, the bloody foam.



22

CASSANDRA 
Clytemnestra1s Gift

Every month the moon will face the fire, 
flush with blood and spill, the sky a shroud, 
on such a night you saw the thirsty pyre 
burning, first of seven, through the clouds. 
Again the salt and fire threw a groan 
of blood and tears across your secret mouth 
and hungry birds released from towers of bone 
began to wheel in darkly from the south. 
That carpet might have been a trough of blood 
or branch of withered fruit with bitter seed, 
your life has been a paralytic flood 
that drowned each terrible song your wounds had freed. 
But with this final tide the fires will fade: 
a sudden mercy hides inside her blade.



23

SEX

Who has kissed a woman even once
not holding in his hand her lovely breast 
and who has ever sent the spirit dressed 
in anything but flesh to join the dance? 
Behind the world the fish of constant birth, 
insurgent sequined blaze of green and gold, 
is flashing in the flux, the flex and fold 
of arms and bellies, lips that touch the earth. 
We bank on grace. We need to feel our lives 
fill up with light and water, stiffen', arc 
from earth to sun to earth again and dark: 
We long to dance. We do so. Grace arrives.
I joined the aching jasmine of her hips, 
the sweet and stinging absinthe of her lips.



24

THE BALTIC

The wind at night is baltic, blue as stones 
that rise in salt alarm along your wrist, 
and when it blows through broken doors you groan 
and focus on the fear inside a fish.
And when, within the drunken water's skull, 
a sickly fire grows to test the tree, 
if heroes scatter off like gelded bulls, 
an angry mother sets her child free.
The moving air is hateful as a hymn 
to any voice imprisoned in the earth; 
the birds that summon stars to kiss the wind 
repeat the awful accident of birth.
The small and sugared bones that make your hand 
are cool and sweet for sleep as shaded sand.



25

POTHOS

The granite column full of rising light 
succeeded giving form a hunger's truth. 
It struck against the bluish black of night 
and answered with the pomegranate's fruit. 
I sent my heart to join its smoke with stone 
but questions only fill their makers' hands. 
I felt a hidden ocean rise and groan 
but fall before the arid voice of sand. 
It's only when, inside a living tree, 
a silver hammer strikes a sunken gong 
and sets the numbered water running free 
that thunder fills the tank of stone with song. 
My hands are bright with secret words for birth. 
My body burns to fill the aching earth.



26

SACROMONTE 
The Wedding

The way the Sacromonte blooms each year 
is like a wave that booms along the shore, 
it heaves its glassy back against the air 
and strikes its fist against the world's door. 
Against the gypsy rocks it's Spring that bursts, 
a foam of flowers blows along the hills 
and spreads beneath the trees a gorgeous curse, 
the curse of Life, that sinks its share and tills. 
What pain, that God should send such awful sons 
to force the frightened maidenhood of Earth 
and fill her children's mouths with bitter songs, 
their hearts with wounds of joy at every birth. 
At first I came to Spain a wedding guest.
I stole the bride. I woke between her breasts.



27

SACROMONTE 
Pilar

”1 stole the bride. I woke between her breasts.” 
The rest he didn’t say: I spun away,
I stamped, I struck the stoney ground, caressed 
the night til darkness burned as bright as day. 
No hand can pluck and crush the glowing rose 
(my dancing governs salt, the voice of seas) 
that blooms within the march of breathing groves 
nor touch my body, hot as olive leaves.
My strength is like a coal. When winds arise 
and blow its sleeping ash to sudden flame 
I dance and fill the air with hungry cries. 
I know what never dies is old and lame.
When others bow their heads and tell their beads 
I laugh and dance. I know their words are weeds.



28

SACROMONTE 
Emilio

I laugh and dance. I know their words are weeds.
I make my own from trees, from drunken light, 
from streets and loss. The soul's a poem that bleeds 
and wets the people's roots, they grow toward sight. 
At night I close myself like flowers close, 
the night is broken-mouthed with breast and whip, 
but day demands a votive verse, a rose, 
a sheaf of wheat, some sign that cheats the crypt. 
My arms are open wide as if to say 
the day is fruit, my children, eat your fill.
I do not draw these visions out of clay, 
I dreamt and God made manifest his will. 
Drink from this, said Christ the Morning Star, 
he held his voice, a white ceramic jar.



29

SACROMONTE 
Gabriel

He held his voice, a white ceramic jar, 
within the trembling choir of his hands 
and made us drunk that night inside the bar 
on wine from grapes he’d grown in dreaming sand. 
His chambered life was pregnant like the vines 
and trained with blood to twine around the tree 
whose every leaf was wind and mute with signs, 
its every hungry flower drunk with bees.
As every drunkard's heart's a broken gate 
and all the bravest men but wounded birds, 
so we were hung on golden nails to wait, 
within our skulls the scattered salt of words. 
That night we sang inside our living loss,
the wind that blew around us knew the cross.



30

SACROMONTE 
Manolin

The wind that blew around us knew the cross, 
it knew the banished gypsies, jews, and moors, 
it always follows those who wander lost: 
the refugees, the powder-blackened poor. 
It also follows those who turn away, 
who, in their crib, enveloped by the wind, 
cried and cursed but grew and could not stay. 
That wind would trap and empty Manolin.
His blood is gypsy, though, and bright with flutes, 
the song of knives within its angry wine 
runs crying down his arm to bear its fruit; 
his grief the furthest grape that bends the vine. 
Behind that broken tower night will rise.
The dead are stars. They fill the night with sighs.



31

SACROMONTE
Belen

The dead are stars. They fill the sky with sighs. 
They fill a girl’s heart and hips with wine 
that pushes out the breasts and swells the thighs 
like Autumn swells the grapes along the vine. 
I dreamt of lemon flowers, loud with bees, 
I dreamt of cisterns, bright with flashing fish, 
my body grew and could not be appeased, 
I called the lightning down my chemic wish. 
But when it struck a thousand voices rose, 
as dark as empty tombs that beg for kings, 
from ancient ground an ancient river flows. 
The dead say ’’child”. Child starts to sing.
Believe you're free and wings will be your chains, 
our bodies love like mountains gather rain.



32

SACROMONTE 
Chemistry and Spirit

Our bodies love like mountains gather rain: 
the clouds ascend and darken, thick with seed, 
they strike a ridge and, trembling with the strain, 
they flash and groan, their sudden waters freed. 
And so the chemic winds of speech will rise 
and find some bodies mouths and others mute, 
from some a song will ghost the bones with cries 
while others scratch the stones around the root. 
Sigh and grant the dead their wish, 
accept the rhythm run through falling suns, 
that circle drawn will give its strength to flesh, 
the spirit’s notched on gut the dead have strung. 
A single sudden music made that clear: 
the way the Sacromonte blooms each year.



33

TWO LONGER POEMS



34

STUDY OF A WOMAN

It is often the back of a woman you watch, 
how the muscle and bones form the chancel of grace, 
how the skin is a silk that is color to touch 
and more honest by far than the stage of the face. 
It's the bodying forth of a music of form 
in whose physical rhythm the heart is unveiled, 
in the salt of whose stops is then instantly known 
what the weather of faces can only conceal.

The grammar of shoulders is perfect mathematical 
motion, 

the fan of the muscles resolves like the waves of the 
ocean, 

an arabic scale of lines from the breastbone to collar 
that logically bears its own beauty to sum at the 

border.
That impulse of rhythm continues in musical order, 
uniting the wings of the arms to the back and the 

shoulders
in circles that end at the ribcage's radial halter, 
completing the formal harmonic, resolving the torso.



35

Bellies reflect all the storms of the face, 
quiet but dangerous changes of grace, 
harbor to graveyard inside of a smile, 
sheltering cove to a desolate space.
Born from this belly, the eyes of the child 
turn when he’s older to gain it with guile, 
learning the secrets that hold it in place, 
and the door that unlocks to a fiery aisle.

The haunches flank and guard the gestured door, 
the final, salt^spun chamber, dreamt of words 
that end their nerves at mute religious verge; 
those muscled columns give upon the core.
Their mobile claim prohibits, grants, or stays 
the votive hand whose visionary reach, 
more hungry than the acrid field of speech, 
is priest for sleep as often as it prays.



36

With every kiss the rushing wind of birth and death 
suspends the drum and marries stars to eyes and breath 
but when the world catches back its stumbled step 
that instant born along its sudden line is kept 
and lives in every sun that locks the angeled edge 
within the flinted oil, down the dolphined ledge, 
and deep within the light that lifts a woman’s hair 
and names its sudden waking down the curse of air.

And when the spirit marries back the flesh, 
then every part is locked within itself 
and every self within the godded mesh, 
the net that is the dealing, not what’s dealt. 
It ’ s then a woman * s body carves a wish 
from air and fills it with her self 
and beauty strikes as sudden as a fish, 
the striken spirit risen up in flesh.



37

THE ALB

"Yes, every man can himself 
save the whole world. I’ve 
often had that thought, Father, 
and it makes me tremble. Have 
we, then, such a great 
responsibility? What must we 
do, then, before we die? 
What way must we follow?"

- Nikos Kazantzakis
The Greek Passion

Syria

Informed with pitch my bones began to cry 
like witches. Run the sleeping iron down 
to tinder underneath the aping calm. 
The soul will fall away a diving sky 
to eyes that fix the absent ward of hope 



38to walls an ill-packed god has taught to shift. 
And while the soul recedes, that burning bag 
the flesh, that rag that caught upon the sill, 
whose voice is rising wind, expands the tongue 
to throw the empty land its broken words.

The swollen light of freeways plagues the dark 
with lurid circles, throws the loaded stone 
behind the spinning crow, beyond the rim 
the certain gravel smiles, above the ear 
those leather-sudden faces cough and crack. 
Invasive fingers traced the hardened links 
and all to nothing gave from core to verge, 
a split in flesh released a wordless curse 
that absent angels chewed behind the pews 
in sack-blown alleys drunk with frantic eyes.

That symbolled night regained the heavy air 
a thousand times. I drove it down again, 
again it strove against my trembling lamp 
at last to break the glass and take the smoke 
to task to wreathe about the body's face 
the snake of days whose sun was ending’s end 
inside the devil of a friend whose hand 
was trailing cold along your wounded line. 
The hidden face was dark whose wish was lie: 
your father's face is wax and holds the sword.



39

And all those faces laddered up my spine 
and spoke before I slept, repenting breath, 
that square of black that nailed my quail heart 
to light, the greenish light of failed life. 
There are no two, there are no two, the coin 
is coin before the faces flash their cells, 
behind the silver eyes the jails wait. 
The light near sleep is bad, a word will move 
behind it, stretch it tight against your sight 
and strop its blade against the autumn side.

The ruin wind had angry hands. For years, 
whenever light went mad, that wind arrived. 
The alb, uncovered, counted all the knives 
that hid in drawers and leaves. I pulled a cloak 
around it, dark and heavy, held it tight, 
at last to let it welcome in the wind.
And when the wind began to pluck and tear 
I clenched my wild thought and bore its touch 
and stood its wooden words to kiss my breath. 
I had no dark damascus.



40

Adam and Christ

Strength and sudden 
choice occasioned savage passage, banished 
dogs to distant winds and caught their voices 
up in wires. Quiet came as king to rule for 
Sight, whose bones began the evening singing, 
pinned against the rock’s receding language. 
Quiet came, a king to walk the borders, 
leaving me to name the grasses, fasten 
down the sparking seams of gold and silver, 
learn the tongue that governs secret weather.

Language tripped the rolling locks and heavy 
doors flew open underneath my growing 
voice. Portcullised tunnels gave their treasures 
out like merchants struck by christed lightning. 
Every time I spoke I named and gathered. 
All the paths between the stones, the water, 
caverns, slate and dust, all the objects, 
forces, fields, martyred by the chaos 
laid their fires out before my words and, 
shriven, took their place behind my gesture.



41

Body followed Mind and found cathedral.
Part to part and part to whole: how language 
knows the truth is what it doesn't say, the 
line that’s never drawn, the interstice. Does 
Object stand to indicate the object?
Never. Part to part and part to whole: the 
body burns with longing for itself, a 
pothos of the known for not, the self for 
other. Power never comes unyoked from 
burden. Suffer stars to turn within you.

So I did. The turning outward followed: 
sound of walnuts striking sidewalks, temples, 
printing presses, rain on pavement, anger, 
women aching, arching backs, a car that, 
sliding sideways, strikes a wall, the papers, 
sweat, trees recieving crowns of fire, 
mountains sloughing ice, the ocean, friendship. 
Hand to face I touched the earth and calmed it, 
lent it reason, taught it change and order, 
covered up its anxious eyes with singing.



42

And yet the borders howled with wind, my naming 
held the gate that gave upon the desert. 
Quiet, growing old and tired, summoned 
me to where the light removed itself from 
rhythm. Beyond the gate, he said, your kingdom, 
yours it is for I am leaving, ceases.
Loud, unruly vision waits. Naming 
nothing, meet it. Let it touch you. 
Saying this, he disappeared. I shuddered, 
leaned against the gate.

The Desert Circle

The telephone desert 
of streets, its electrical sky and ambivalent triremes, 
was haunted no less by itself than the day that I left 

it.
Alarms in my blood were the hammers of wind on the 

bells of
my eyes. I had vanquished the yards and the acids of 

heartbeat
and still the enormous, tyrannical alb was the chain of 
its spikes and my mastering bomb. When I opened my 

mouth to



43
(stanza continues)

arrest its exquisite ballet and order its prismed 
and prisonless rhythm a hand of my own and 

undisciplined
making reduced my imperious crook to a harrow.

The alb had become what it always had been, a 
conductor

of winds and a siren for ships, that transformed my 
unwilling

and innocent bones into graveyard for truths, and 
deliverance, 

sea-wracked, escaped me a thousand to one. I had 
ordered, 

it’s true, but the order was consequence crippled, 
arranged like

the deck of a ship of its cards that were cut to 
explain a

geometry: solitude. Seed-cones from trees were their 

own and
expensive and wind, as the agent of spending, 

collecting
the cry, the ecstatic release of the loins of the 

end-all,
relinquished its bursting to rocks at the foam’s edge.



44

When blooming began at the booming, conjecture grew 
roman.

I lowered my eyes to the dogs I kept hem-woven, 
turning

to dogs every kiss of the wind and my life tasted 
bitter as resin.

The asphalt gave gravel to sand in my walking, the 
sun and

the moon gave the stars to my waking, the poles gave 
the pines to the scrub of the rocks and I entered the 

desert, 
a field of loss like a radio wave on the ocean, 
the lesser and chattering desert consumed by the 

silence.
The alb had prevented the truth from embracing 

my soul and
I wanted that wound, that consumption of spirit,

that fire.



45

The branches that lay in the hollow of sound started 
hissing

and roiling like snakes in the sand, as though fire 
egg, as

though birth were the bridge between earth and the 
ether, transmuting

the flesh of an ape to an angel, but neither, not ape 
and

not angel, but changing itself, as though juncture, 
transcendence,

the instant of altering, that was the soul.
Surrounded

by seconds, the moments directly before the components 
emerge and connect in the rain or electrical dust,
I drove to the arcing release of choice which, 

divested
of logic, allowed the embrace of the altering fire.



46

The alb, transmuted to heat, a reflection of heaven, 
was raising a spiral of sparks to the stars as its 

ashes
descended like seed to the sand. I relinquished the 

other
for self and collected the nameless, unnameable light 

of
the absence of dialogue. Heaven descended to marry 
my blood to the borderless circle that circumscribes 
home. The wheel I'm bound to, the wind and the naming, 
the world that welcomes the clock and the wire, the 

locks that
unlock in the bones of the cross: in the motionless 

lunge of
a mansion, I rose from myself to the barbarous rock.



47

JACKSONVILLE:
A NARRATIVE POEM IN PROGRESS



48His visions never came like cheap tableau, 
that gift of tine with stage enough for lie, 
they never sought his enpty eyes in dreams 
around whose secret flags the light can bend. 
No golden trumpets blew to part the clouds, 
releasing singing angels, streaming light, 
and joy that draws the water forth from stones. 
Instead the stupafacient hand of God 
would strike his forehead, paralyze the boy, 
and hold him still while glory bloomed 
like flowers through the trembling landscape. He, 
the roaring god himself, made manifest: 
no picturesque and gaudy angel came 
but God himself, the wind that fills the breast, 
explaining how the mountains rose and why, 
explaining how the oceans rose and why, 
explaining how the earth drew forth from dust 
and how the governed dust itself wil govern, 
and why it is that men are given speech, 
that sight is angel-wrapped in shaking stars, 
that most are given speech and sight in drops, 
for sated souls are thick and thirst* s a gift, 
a godding gift for spirits who so soon 
give up the stars themselves to wield whips 
(that towered try a lie of burning hands - 
there was no urge to go beyond the skin - 
and no one rose but those who bought and sold) .



49

And so his visions came to him like wind 
and standing still he moved like eagles move. 
He froze, his arms extended up to God, 
his face would twist with joy and now with fear, 
with anger, pity, dread, and now with thirst, 
but he, the body, still; a cistern, still.

"Why I saw him only yesterday, in front 
of Beekman's Bank on California Street. 
I was comin’out, I beg yer ladies' pardon, 
from the Table Rock Saloon, having had 
a tonic after closing up the shop.
It could have been as late as eight, or nine 
the latest, having worked a little late.
So anyhow, I'm cornin' out of the Table 
Rock and turn the corner onto California 
and who should I see but Lathrop's son, God rest 
his soul, the drunken sot, I beg yer pardon, 
Nicolas the mute. He's standin' there his arms 
all up and stiff as a starched and Sunday collar. 
First I thought that he was a wooden ind'in, 
that maybe Denny Horne had got one for 
his store except his store's on Main, but anyhow, 
he's standin' there like makin' ready to catch 
a sack of grain. But his face is not so stiff,



50it’s movin' all around, it’s almos' like 
he's talkin', though a course he ain't, and never 
has so far as I remember. Worse

aH is this - he's pissin' in his pants. 
I beg again yer ladies' pardon, truth 
must sometimes take importance to our manners. 
And so I wait awhile, watch him talk 
without a word just like he's talkin' to the Lord 
himself at Peter's Gate, to see he's safe, 
you ladies know to care fer others is our charge, 
we mortals here on earth. I figger maybe 
he's prayin' to the Lord to take it easy on his father, 
bless his sotted soul, I beg yer pardon. 
Then, sudden-like he's back on earth, I mean 
he's movin', lookin' down at where he's made 
a mess of himself, then sights me standin' there 
across the street and stumbles over to where 
I am. He stumbles like he's drunk as a pope, 
forgive me Mrs. Kent, I ferget myself, 
though a course he ain't. And he comes up like this 
and opens up his mouth as though to speak. 
Ladies, I must admit that I was frightened 
when out come such a caterwaul of sounds 
and no two together made a word of english.
I found myself just layin' on the ground 
and come around a secon' later to find 
that he had disappeared no doubt up Third



51to where his dear departed father, drunken 
sot, I beg yer pardon, God have mercy 
on his drunken soul, he was a friend a mine, 
and he had lived together since his birth, 
his father’s sad, untimely death that left 
him orphan now to wander this earth alone.”

It’s T.J. Kinney spoke who owned a store 
that occupied the Brunner Building there 
where California Street met Oregon, a hardware store 
and grocery started by his father Ben 
whose father came to stake a claim when gold 
infused the streams with light but not the same 
the hearts of men who felt that metal call.
But some, like T.J.•s granddad, stayed the storm 
and took a surer claim of land and made 
a living free from luck or if not free 
at least a bit more dignified and clean.
And Jacksonville grew up upon the bones 
of men like Kinney men and on their wives, 
on women like the women Kinney spoke 
to, Mrs. Kent the teacher, Mrs. Hope, 
a farmer's wife, and Mollie Britt, 
the photographer's daughter, handsome and quiet.

It's Kinney spoke who then excused himself 
and left the ladies standing out in front



of City Hall. 52

"I'd best be gettin* back," 
he said, "and mind the store. I',m short a man 
and so today's especial busy, 'course." 
And saying so, he turned and left them, full 
of thoughts about the boy, his brother, gone 
these almost fourteen years, their father, drunk 
and angry after Judith, loving wife, 
had died in childbirth, a sickly child 
born upon her dying breath who then 
grew still. The smell of whisky's drunken fist 
had shut his mouth and forced the words inside 
and he a drunkard too, of sorts, of fits, 
a god-drunk fool, or sick, in need of love, 
a real family, any, all, depends 
on who you talk to. Each of them, of course, 
with different thoughts, concerned with different 

things, 
their joys and living needs and sorrow all 
convergent now in contemplation, brows 
in furrows all but all by different plows.

The mountains rise to reach their making God, 
to reach that surging breast of which the clouds, 
the forge, the boiling pot, are merely echoes. 
Mountain just the same as man and sun,



53as ocean, iron, horses, just the same 
the mountain pays its price upon the cross. 
From deep inside the breast of God we came, 
a scream, his voice released the running word, 
and we are it. So Jesus only one 
of many Christs: the cricket Christ, the mouse, 
the rain and sunshine Christ, the wolf a Christ, 
and each to take their turn upon the cross 
and turn, transform, return to fill that mouth, 
initial womb the breath, with air alive 
and sweet with sweat and birth, the burden borne, 
and now the cross unlocks and, feeding God, 
we rest, undone, resoved in bearing fruit 
whose bud and leaf are bitter death to tast.
We feed our hungry god, the air is honey.
We are like the eyes and ears of God, 
returning echo tells the shouting mouth 
the breadth and depth, with such a stone for walls, 
with roof or no,.if water runs or not.
0 God! Your echo comes to kiss your ear: 
your pain and longing, joy and fear, have found 
exceeding good the sharp, the soft, the hard 
and flat and deep, the now, the truth, 
the borne-to-being all your breath has blown.

It’s this he thought. The night was April fourth, 
his father's death almost a year before



54was heavy on his conscious mind. He left 
the house he'd lived in since his luckless birth, 
his mother's death, his father's drunkenness, 
to walk the streets and think about the stars. 
Perhaps, he thought, the hand of God will come 
release me from my worried guilt, release, 
a word of comfort, wind as dear as blood 
perhaps would fill his chest again and shrive 
his thick and guilty breathing, flooded tongue, 
perhaps tonight the visions, if they came, 
would find the secret lock and he would speak. 
If he could only speak what good he'd do! 
These people he would touch with love and force, 
the mystery forking wildly down his voice 
would free their fleshy souls and set their minds 
at liberty; what they did would be 
a little clearer, cleaner, free from fear. 
The vision came as clear as falling rain, 
a sense of rising, mountains rising, bees 
and clouds and anger, rising, souls and trees, 
it all was rising, pictures gone beyond the eyes, 
to skin and words, to bone and longing soul 
and these, the words or feelings, pictures, surged 
around his tongue and hands. The voice of God 
released him from this ecstasy of sight 
but still it ran like liquor down his bones.



55Night. The gaslights burned along the street, 
the empty street. And sudden from the dark 
steps Mr. Kinney, oldest friend in town 
his father ever had. He sways and grasps 
the streetlamp with his drunken hands 
and peers at Nicolas. The urge to speak 
was strong like wine around his humming skull. 
He made for Kinney, straight and strong as oak 
to tell him God was different than he thought 
and Kinney swayed despite the solid pole 
he clung to. Nicolas approached to speak. 
He opened up his mouth believing speech 
would not deny him this time, near a decade 
gone since first he felt the hand and strangely saw. 
But when he opened up his mouth the words, 
the feelings, pictures, truths got all confused 
like burning gasses blue with heat above 
the logs within the fireplace will spit 
and flash and roll beyond the ordered calm 
of warmth. In such a way the sound escaped 
to form a gorgeous language out beyond 
a mortal grammar, good for Gods and verse 
but not for men like Kinney. Like the flames 
a fire makes might rob the room of air, 
the speech the vision-drunken boy had made 
had stolen all of Kinney's thought away 
and left him in a heap upon the boards,



56a growing stain between his legs.

In front 
of City Hall the ladies stood in thought. 
From where the hills stood south in midday sun 
a gentle breeze was blowing into town 
the smell of pine, a resined warmth and spice, 
that formed a raftered bower in their thoughts, 
a common bower, built inside the air, 
and from it rose a single singing voice. 
Though made by several separate throats 
each one of which was different in its pitch 
and different in its timbre and its tone 
according to the way the years had struck 
each lady's heart (the way that fingers strike 
the strings that stretch across the same guitar 
each a little differently) a single voice 
was rising through the leaves, a single singing voice.

"That evening's sky," thought Mrs. Kent, 
"was blue enough to match the sea. 
Along the snowy streets I went 
as much at peace as I could be, 
when through a frosty pane I saw 
the painter Lathrop's shaking frame. 
His anger rose to set his jaw 
and pull its muscles tight in pain.



57His life had. given him a lot 
to curse the distant heavens for... 
It's true, I can't know what he thought 
that night I passed his awful door... 
It may have been his wife and how 
he brought her here to start a home 
from Indiana where his plow 
had broken when it struck a stone.
The factories, too, were like the corn; 
they grew at first but turned to dust. 
He loved his land and he was torn 
but work was work and work he must. 
They loaded up with food and tools, 
the buckboard creaked beneath the weight, 
they were, he said, just common fools, 
but something in it felt like fate. 
They drove to where the wagon trains 
most often start their journeys from, 
St. Louis where the arid plains 
stretch out to catch the setting sun. 
On all the long and weary trip 
the only troubled time they had 
was when the Ogallala's grip 
got tight and made the settlers mad. 
And when they passed along that way 
they felt the very air grow tense. 
The guides, though, knew just what to say,



58they gave out gifts to mend the fence. 
Oh, also, when they crossed the Platte, 
all swollen with the summer floods, 
a couple oxen bolted flat
and drowned when they got stuck in mud. 
They made the trip to Portland fine 
and filed for a claim of land 
in Jacksonville which at that time 
was calling out to fill new hands 
with pasture, stock and timber, wheat, 
with game, with all the living gold 
of healthy soil, rain that's sweet 
and steady, winters not too cold. 
It seemed ideal, made to plan, 
the gold was gone from Jackson Creek 
but while it shone it was a light 
that summoned to the Siskyou's peaks 
the hungry few who rode at night 
and blazed the way to settle down 
for sturdy stock with empty hands 
who felled the trees and built the town 
and tamed the brawling, wild land.
So Lathrop and his pretty wife 
came south to start a farm again, 
to build a tough but solid life 
far away from robber winds.
The plot they chose was close to town.



59He cleared a space and built a barn 
but town was growing all around 
and soon would reach their little farm. 
So what he did was build a home, 
a garden so that they could eat, 
a pen so when the cow would roam 
she couldn't reach the growing wheat. 
But wheat he didn't ever plant, 
he had a better plan by far: 
he'd sell the town his idle land 
and with the money forge a star. 
And so he did, he built a forge, 
and had a business bending steel 
and all his work possessed the edge 
of how much joy a .man can feel.
His wife was pregnant, full of life, 
and all his grills and railings wild. 
He loved her more with all the strife 
she went through bringing him a child. 
His business grew, he specialized 
in iron railings, window grills, 
with raging angels in the skies 
and beasts that ran upon the hills.
He painted, too, did signs for stores 
and made a decent living so, 
you couldn't pass a single door 
in J'ville Lathrop didn't know.



Oh, what a decent life they led, 
the business good and many friends, 
a sturdy house and spotless bed, 
but no one sees around the bends. 
So years went by and Judith grew 
to child again with Lathrop's love 
but apples on the bough are few 
when winter settles from above.
When hunger's great the axe will strike 
and fell the tree to reach the fruit, 
so God will take a woman's life 
to save a child, that's the truth. 
So maybe what I saw that night, 
the night I passed be Lathrop's place, 
was all that anger, all the fright, 
resurging into Lathrop's face. 
He struck the boy a dozen times. 
The older, Jack, was trying so 
to stop his father's drunken crime, 
to save his brother from the blows. 
That night I saw the elder, Jack, 
pick up an iron frying pan 
and dash his father from back.
He hit the ground and off Jack ran. 
It's been just shy of fourteen years 
since Jack's been gone from Jacksonville, 
his family history, one of tears:

60



a mother dead, a father ill
with drink that caught his broken heart 
a twelve-month past and brought him down, 
a brother shorn of words, apart 
with fits and strangeness from the town. 
It reads just like a tragedy 
of Shakespeare’s type, without an end 
except for death, finality, 
where eyes are closed by a stranger's hand. 
A stranger’s hand. A stranger’s hand."

Forgive me my son for the anger and hate in my bones, 
for the blows that I dealt you that drove out your 

voice from its home.
Before I can rest in the terrible bosom of space
I must prove to the stones that my spirit is worthy of 

grace.
So I search for the smoke of your words through the 

ruins of air
to return them at last to your mouth in the form of a 

prayer.
I am raging my son down the angel of tears in your 

heart,
my hands full of speech that were once overflowing with 

hurt.

Mrs. Hope was a woman, courageous and bright:



"He weren' any reguller Cath‘lie I'm certain 
that emptied ' is heart out in back of a curtain, 
though sometimes he'd inner St. Joseph's in daylight 
and wander around like a soul full a hurtin'. 
I'd see ' im a-Sundays, his son an' 'is wife, 
with 'is eyes full a happiness, piercin' but bright, 
and they'd go han'-in-han' to the Methodist church 
an' together they'd worship, their hearts full a light. 
Inside a St. Joseph's he'd walk as though searchin', 
a man who could see where the vultures were perchin' , 
he knew there were birds that were willin' to hasten 
our lives to their ends when they fill up with cursin'. .. 
There were somethin' like midnight that lived in his 

face, 
yes, an' even in sunshine it left a faint trace, 
not personal sin, not the evil, age-old, 
that emerges in Man an' deprives 'im a grace, 
it felt more like a war that was waged in the cold, 
the desperate fight of a man to take hold 
a the truth where it hides between nerves a hot silver 
and bowls made a stone in the rooms a the soul. 
His struggle at first absolute in the metal, 
he bended the iron to roses and nettles, 
to angels whose voices, as angry as lions, 
would rage like a storm and then sweeten and settle. 
Then Britt taught 'im paintin', the colors an' lines 
were more full of the violent sweetness a time 



than the truculent metal whose powerful heart 
would never submit to the needs a the mind. 
”A path on the earth is a flower-strewn carpet,” 
said dear Father Blanchet one day from the pulpit, 
and that's why he'd walk in the garden so of fin: 
he searched for the Reason in bees and their targets. 
One ev'nin' at twilight, the air was so soft, 
in that garden a roses an' water an' rock, 
I saw 'em together, the Father an' Lathrop. 
They'd walk for a while an' then stop so's to talk, 
an' then Lathrop would gesture, then let his arms drop, 
an' the Father would crouch an' then spin, almos' hop, 
an' then Lathrop would clap an' together they'd laugh 
an* their faces get red til it seemed like they'd pop. 
With time I discovered the reason for laughter, 
why Lathrop spent hours beneath St. Joe's rafters. 
Though not by my nature a curious person 
I discovered what Father and Lathrop were after. 
There's somethin' that's needed in a good Cath'lie 

church
in the makin' a which Mr. Lathrop were versed. 
It's the altarpiece paintin' St. Joe's was without 
an' J'ville had few enough painters a course. 
They were laughin' about the potential fer doubters 
to falter an' stammer when faced with the power 
created when spirits are caught in the struggle 
with God an' with fear in a soul-changin' hour.



When a man has a whiskey you can't mor'n shrug. 
If you look down yer finger yer beggin* bad luck. 
But Lathrop began, with the death of his wife, 
to be drunken so much that he lived in a fog 
It's the pain of his loss he was tryin* to stifle. 
It hurt like a wound from a Rentin'ton rifle.
His hand, it got slow, and his wits started dullin' 
til iron an' paintin' seemed burdensome trifles. 
The altar is still just as bare as a skull. 
It's a still as the ocean right after a squall, 
like the instant between when the lightnin'll strike 
an' the thunder that follows to bury the lull. 
Well he died, Lathrop did, in the trough a the 

lightnin'.
He died like he lived, full a anger an' frightened 
an' left with his death on a night-secret easle 
a half-finished ghost a the thing he was fightin' . 
So when Margaret Day said she noticed a breeze 
in St. Joseph's one evenin' that smelled so like bees 
an' turnin' aroun' said she saw at the altar 
a man who had fallen down onto his knees 
an' was tryin' to paint there a gold-colored psalter 
with transparent hands that continually faltered 
and let go the brush which would turn into water 
it's a thing that I tend not to question or balk at, 
for spirits remember the man, what he fought,



an' they sometimes can never unlearn what they’re 
taught.

So they wander aroun' an* they try to make true 
what the man in his waking-time would and could not, 
what the man in his waking—time would but could not, 
would but could not.

Oh my son, oh my son where you sleep in the cloven 
sheet, 

in the axe-hewn, impossible chamber of riven speech, 
and the molecules liberate light from the whispering 

planks
and the creek is undone in its secretive, glittering 

banks,
I awaken and flutter, a butterfly borne in your breast, 
in the bones of your chest, in the acid disciple of 

rest
to recite, revirescent, the mandating canticle’s verse 
that a father reborn in the tongue of his progeny’s

curse
is a stop-water churn til the boy raise his eloquent 

hand
and unlock the arrested-by-death in a duty of sand.
I charge prophet-in-prince to the laboring rim of the 

wheel
in the spin and the call of the padlock-springing heel.



Oh my son, oh my son where you dream in your hauling 66

sleep, 
continuing wings shall unlock in your hands when you 

weep
because only when holy is heat through your minister 

clay

can my soul tumble off of the troughs of the husbanding 
wave.

Amalia Britt, the daughter, not so far 
from forty sexless years, with girl's name, 
was woman still, her maidenhood a scar, 
a broken circle, candled through its flame, 
that burned above the drying crate of sex 
and caught each sweating shadow in its frame.

"When you were boy I’d known the deep effects 
of Spring on flesh for nearly seven years. 
I'd felt the chemic honey need collects 
along its maiden legs despite the fear; 
despite the blood, despite the jealous God, 
I opened out whenever Man came near.
But God was wrapped in Father's coat, his odd 
and close affection storming through the house 
could bang the shutters to, his word a rod. 
My name is small and figured like a mouse, 
could Mollie lose the sailor on her sea?,



67my name has closed around me like a noose.
But you, my Jack, as lithe as alder, sweet, 
I watched you swell and stretch the mortal sail, 
I longed to wrap myself in such a sheet. 
At twenty-four my family watched me ail, 
thinking I had breathed a foetid air.
I knew that I was woman. I would fail. 
The passion in my heart was acid there, 
it sought to move across the gradient, 
to flow from me to where you stood, fair 
Apollo, you, the sun, from heaven sent 
to balance out the pull of secret tides, 
to calm the waves inside that shook and rent. 
I tried to show you how I was inside 
by showing how my flesh is echoed soul, 
my breasts and calves, my hair, my summer smell, 
but you were boy; unbridled, frightened foal. 
In vain I tried to cast you in my spell 
and free myself from fate, the spinning wheel, 
joining broken Ixion in hell.
But you were not Apollo, though you reeled 
off his gunning spool the running sun.
You cannot always govern what you steal. 
Your father, dark Apollo, owned the sun, 
the font of heat whose heart's the voice of light. 
He threw you down. You woke to what was done. 
You ran away, my Phaeton, stolen bright



68way yours by right of clenched and shining fist, 
the farther-running burning back the night. 
But I? The men I’d never bent to kiss 
were dark and dreadful down the sunless branch 
and dying down the rhythm of a wish.
0 brother Robert, Chronos, more than man, 
my Jack has gone to grow a greater star 
and time has tumbled backward to your hand. 
My maidenhood remains a lifeless scar. 
Before that moon within has closed its circle 
making me, in chastity, a whore, 
I'd have you use this sacrificial sickle, 
bloody partner to my godding need, 
and free us both from father-fastened bridle. 
But this is Jacksonville, in Oregon, 
where all the mythic stars are underground 
and all the ancient heroes dead and gone.
I cannot live to hope to hear the sound 
of clanging swords on brazen shield boss 
and naked saviors singing down the town. 
And nineteen-two's a year of certain dross, 
no deed on earth will shudder through the stars 
and gild the clouds with either hope or loss. 
No, Father's no Uranus, locked to laws 
that Chronos cuts him from, that touch the sea
and gender there the burning rise and fall 
of junctured man whose-cross is do and be, 



who knows the mythopoeic voice is his, 
who knows with every stitching breath, he's free. 
No, I am simply Mollie, this my dress 
and this the City Hall and this the street 
and this the Earth whom many winds caress, 
and Jack, who's gone, a simple girl's dream, 
a simple loss, a simple aching loss, 
a simple aching loss, a withered dream 
that's made me less, that's closed the seam 
that should have, aching out, allowed the stream 
of life to roar eternal turning torrent 
down the locked and pebbled drought, a loss, 
a simple aching loss, a withered dream.

My son, oh my son, it is better to choose, when you 
can, 

the peace of the rain, of a glacier, of wind in the 
mountains.

It's better to love only Man, never men in their 
seasons

or women, whose weathers uncaptain the ship of your 

reason.
Don't minister love to the face that decays with the 

gown
but only to that which remains when the pain's 

underground



with the cables of speech and belief. If, unlearning 
the heart,

you commune with the soul, if you conjure the whole, 
though the parts

be unlocked into dust by the sun, you will then know 
the one

that expresses the many, the gendering Word. You must 
run

at the edge of your need or be tangled and caught by 
the net

of your love. In this desert of soul is the prophet 
well met

who insists on unwrapping the flesh from the bones of 
the drought

or will they, uncrowned in the heat of their 
marshalling doubt,

be undone? Will they call for the fish to be burnt in 
the furrow?

That common bower built inside the air, 
in front of City Hall, that smelt of pine, 
was moved by stronger breezes from the south 
and then dispersed completely by the pop 
and clatter of Wendt’s delivery wagon rounding 
onto Oregon from California Street.
The German, George, had run the dairy, west 
of town, out east of Ruch, since 1880.



Passing where the ladies stood, he raised 
his thick hand to wave and bellow out "Hallo,” 
the Rhine was still a river in his voice, 
and turn the wagon onto Main. The cans 
as big as beer kegs sang with every pothole. 
Nunan passed, a dapper figure dressed 
in foreign cloth, the merchant's surrey cut 
the gravel like a keel cuts the sand, 
and Beekman crossed on California. Down 
the street Judge Colvig's wife came out of the Post 
Office, waved, and crossed the street. 
The town, in short, came back alive as if 
the very peak of day were too intense 
to let the people of the town walk unmolested 
down the street. They had no bower like 
the ladies had or maybe out of some 
respect they had but didn't know, they left 
the ladies all alone to finish up 
a business that their presence couldn't help. 
The town came back alive, as much as J'ville could.

"Goodbye now, Mrs. Hope, I hope the trip 
back out is pleasant."

"Oh, as like as not it will 
be, thank you, Mrs. Kent and keep those ornery 
rascals quiet during lessons. Miss 
Mollie, tend the roses, give my greetin's



to yer pa." 72

"Thank you. Goodbye. Give my love 
to your Mister, Goodbye, Mrs. Kent. Goodbye." 
"Goodbye, my dear."

"Goodbye."
"Goodbye, Mrs. Hope." 

"Goodbye. Goodbye, Mrs. Kent. Next Sunday, God 
willin1."

Almost one. Nicolas woke to light 
pouring through the dusty air from the skylight 
of the attic where he slept. He'd moved th bed 
up piece by piece the night his father died. 
He slowly drew the covers back, sat upright 
slowly drew his trousers on. The lamp 
was out that hung upon a nail driven 
deep into one of the rising beams that locked 
peak into the attic roof. A wonder 
that, during the night, it hadn't set his shirt 
on fire, hanging, as it was, so near 
it on another nail. He must remember - 
always put the light out. He was bothered, 
visions he had worn the night before 
weren't absent in his sleep, just altered, strange, 
or stranger anyway than merely hearing 
God. He couldn't place it, couldn't stop 
its furtive fliting through his tired mind.



He went downstairs. The corner of the kitchen was still 
heaped with the food the ladies from the Methodist 

Church
had brought two days ago: a sack of beans, 
and flour, cheese and bacon, sugar, salt, 
and coffee. He dug the coffee out and lit 
the stove. The cracking jackpine perfuming 
the room, he stepped outside and stood on the porch. 
Jackson Creek was purling small and cold 
inside this day in May, already warm, 
that drew the blooming flowers through the hedge. 
A debt of words was smoke in angry hands, 
his head was buzzing. Still, the dreams were shorn 
of sense. He stepped inside and fetched the boiling 
coffee off the stove and dampered it down.
He brought a cup and brought his shoes and socks 
outside. He dressed and drank, the butterflies, 
blue and white, were flying arabesques 
with honeybees in gold and black like music. 
He walked the yard, a pasture nearly, down 
to the creek and drank his coffee watching patterns 
form and change is silver script across 
the water’s flowing face. He walked the creek 
bank north to the property line and east along 
the row of manzanita, behind the little 
barn, the broken-down corral, and south 
along the neighbor's fence and past the shed 



he'd never seen unlocked except when Father 
went with lantern, drunk, to wrestle someone, 
something, living there. He’d watch, afraid, 
from the living room window, his brother Jack 
and he, and hours later Father staggered 
out and locked the door behind him tight. 
He passed the shed and walked across the yard 
to where the hedge of buzzing azaleas, colored 
like the meat of salmon, held the porch 
in place, its wooden columns wound around 
and green with silent ivy. Inside, he poured 
another cup. The coffee hissed against 
the metal kettle’s lip. He set it on 
the cutting board and stepped outside again. 
The ruins of air, the love of mountains, a prayer 
that broke across a crying angel's voice, 
these things were dreamed but unremembered. 
He shook his head. Despite the heat of early 
afternoon, the day retained a morning 
coldness. He put the cup inside the door 
and shut it. Til the boy raise his eloquent hand, the 

boy
a prince, and wrapped in the cloven sheet, the sheet 
his speech. These ghosts were haunt beyond his knowing. 
Ghosts? One? Or many? Decode the glittering 
script on the silvered paper. He shut the door 
and stood. He’d walk! He'd walk the town and tempt



75the truth, gazelle to lion, pull the truth, 
an always hungry creature, out of eyes 
and doorways!

He walked down Third Street, like the 
rest, 

a road of packed dirt, rutted by wagons, 
mud when rains came, mud in Spring, 
to E where, cross the street, stood Campbell's house 
Campbell, whom his father shot but didn't 
kill one summer night so many years ago 
who hated him and all his kin since.
The back screen door knocked against the jamb, 
a hollow sound that carried through the morning 
air. He ducked his head and turned up E 
toward Fifth. He crossed the creek where, up above, 
two jays sat chattering in a pine. He tried to reach 
the sense inside their piped and reedy speech, 
and tried to reach the sense inside the scrawling 

water, 
but failed both. He walked again toward Fifth. 
A wagon clattered into Meyer's lot, 
its left, rear wheel wobbled, scraped 
against the hub. Meyer fixed the wagons, 
farmers', townsmens 1, orchard owners', miners', 
despite the train and crawled over the Siskiyous 
wagons still were how they hauled their trade.



Beyond the lot the squat yellow brick 
of a house where Old Dowell prowled nightly. 
Too small for regulation haunt, it hunkered 
pitifully, two thick columns framing 
the door, a tiny balcony above - 
his daughter lived away, his dreams of the Senate, 
dust with the papers printed twenty years 
before. He passed the stern and silent church 
the Methodists bowed before their grim god in, 
his father, mother, Methodist, reserved, 
though not without an apple in the voice, 
a plum or peach inside the way they moved, 
a little bit of sin, that is, of life - 
a loss, caress, and music, a good laugh, 
and singing, lovely how the hand can move 
a brush and cause the colors to rush like waves 
across the cloth, a little sin, though sin 
is not the real word, the smell of roses, 
something solid for the soul to move through, 
and, passing through, to eat, a little sin 
is like heavy, fresh bread. Beyond, up D, 
a block before his house, rose the Catholic 
Church, where his father walked with Father Blanchet 
through the Church's rose garden, for Lathrop a refuge, 
where God was greater, not just hammered spirit, 
blood and struggle also, lust and gold 
and anger? full, so full he needed man



. 77to scream and laugh through. He went each Sunday, 
though, to Methodist services. Why? Perhaps to pin 
his soul against a simple, ugly rock 
else wild earth would pitch him heavenward, 
torn to pieces by the godded wind.
A shiver ran through Nicolas's frame, not born 
of fear but just as though electric signals 
moved through diodes, he a juncture for a windy 
spirit's surge, he always opened out, 
a fact of nature.He turned up Fifth toward California, 
passed the County Courthouse, remaining peg 
that held old J'ville down, that, slipping out, 
would toss it up to wind to join the dust 
that blew from Dowell's cellar, that blew from Medford, 
Ashland, all the towns with rail, all 
the towns whose roots were thief to J'ville's gold, 
the robbing roots that looked just like the rails. 
Behind the Courthouse where the fire wagons 
parked the Sheriff, Johnston, stood against 
a lightpole, shotgun cradled cross his arms, 
and watched a group of men shining brass 
on the engines. Other men, in ties, with satchels, 
talked on the front steps, county men, 
lawyers, politicians, plaintiffs, men 
with grievances. Tow ladies passed with parasols. 
He walked on, past The Ladle, a hash 
joint, Thurmond, giant Dane, behind



the counter talking with a couple of workers 
in town from Tree Top Orchard and with Washington, 
the barber, black, one of the few in town. 
There were problems later sometimes for folks that 

talked
with Washington, but Thurmond didn’t care, too big 
for threats. One time a couple a roughs had tried 
to rob him - dead now. Thurmond never carried a gun: 
his gigantic fists and a knife he’d bought 
on the Costa Brava, these were enough. Lathrop 
and he were friends, through everything, friends, 
two stubborn men who once stepping forward 
never stepped back. Thurmond turned 
and saw him, waved a strange sad hand.
He ducked his head and walked on by.
He stopped where California Street turned road 
and headed east to Phoenix. The intersection 
of two roads always woke a bird 
behind his breast bone. He watched to town 
spill fields down the valley, the road 
spun a dirty ribbon toward the sun's cradle. 
Despite the warmth of midday, Spring, a line 
of smoke rose from a chimney in the valley. 
The smoke of words were gathered from the ruins of air 
and, held by an angel, were carried past a mountain 
to my mouth. He thought. The sun spun, escaped. 
Came back. He raised his eloquent hand



79and stared it silver, the people passing
passed him wide. Just the town loonie, 
someone said by way of explanation. 
Nicolas made the flowers sing inside 
their ears. Oh my tiny angel, oh my angel. 
California street, laid out like a gauntlet, 
opened up before him west. The McCully House, 
with its columns and carriage house, was quiet 
on the left. He passed it, passed the Judge’s 
wife who walked toward him on the sidewalk, 
song of drums on the raised wooden slats, 
who nodded, hello. Across the street, beneath 
the oak, stood Miller, unshaven, talking with Kinney 
who saw him oddly, pushed his beaten hat 
back on his tall forehead, whispered something 
to make Miller look. Oh. The mountains, 
not the men, not the women. Oh.
He stepped down into Fourth Street, crossed it, 
muddy trough, up onto the boardwalk 
again, where he skirted a group of ladies in Spring 
dresses who jerked the hems back, away 
from him, as though he were a dog with mange. 
Oh. People passing on the boardwalk, a press 
of folks with business to attend to.
He passed by Washington's barber shop, closed, 
its weathered sign had nigger scrawled across it, 
crossed out. Across the street a group 



of ladies from the Methodist church were talking. 
Next to where they stood was Miller's Hardware-Grocery, 
his wife swift and easy behind the counter.
He looked up to the second floor, all dark and empty, 
where Veit Schulz once ran, dead now, 
one of the two breweries in town, the other, 
run by Helms's son out of the Table Rock, 
still in operation evidently. 
Next to Miller's, Nunan's fancy office, 
roll-top desks and clerks with green visors 
chocking up the figures, sending wires - 
wheat to Brookings, pears to the Medford depot, 
apples out across the Coast Range 
to Cresent City ships and round to Boston, 
New York, maybe Europe for all 
he knew. Down again, cross Third, 
and up, where, opposite, the U.S. Hotel 
where Madamme Reboam still held court, 
lived her dim husband down. "Dumb as a pig 
but fierce in love." She said so grudgingly 
but lack shone cold in her bright eyes, 
her drying flesh was witness to her loss. 
The Hotel itself was aging, breaking in 
and falling down. It lost some sparkle, 
vice, adventure, President Harding was long 
gone down a swirl of blown leaves 
but still the peeling columns, dusty rooms,



81clapped magic through the minds of many;
deals made and love undone, the marriages 
to quiet constancy or wild catastrophe 
were good to think on, strong drink 
for the ailing many. He turned up third, away 
from Beekman’s Bank, Old Beek himself 
behind the counter, Beek, who grew from rich 
to richest selling J'ville down the river, 
up the valley, really, having refused 
to loan the town the money needed years 
ago to draw the trains. He sold his town 
to fix the railhead in Medford where, 
how strange, he owned the land they’d put 
the depot on. So Jacksonville was drying 
out. It blew away a little bit 
with every strong wind. Old Beek didn't mind. 
Old Beek was very rich. Nicolas 
truned at Main to come up behind 
the Mason's Hall where, in the gravel, Wendt's 
wagon was still parked, empty of cans. 
He looked up the wooden stairs that clung 
precariously to the windowless hall of the brick 

building
that led to a door the Jewish families entered 
for rituals, mysterious and dark. They chanted 
Fridays down the dim evening, gave 
the trees and earth the secret silver of chimes.



82Sometimes Nicolas came out at dusk to hide behind 
a bush or underneath the stairs and catch
the thrown silver signets of their words 
and in the deeper dark of the creek unlock them. 
There were six families worshipping there, 
three were German, two were Russian, one 
was a Latvian family, down from twelve 
or so ten years ago. Those who chased 
the silent Chinese out of town in a mob of guns 
drove frightened blood through every vein whose name 
did not have bearded birth in green and northern 
weathers. Every borrowed name, or changed 
in the cold stone shadows underneath cathedrals, 
hewn above the fencing mountains, shook 
with the drum of hoof and torch that rise 
in angry doubt and poverty of spirit through 
the sick child when his breathing cradle starts 
to cave beneath him. He turned up Oregon.
A man tied a horse to a post in front 
of City Hall, threw the reigns across 
the horizontal hitching pole. He watched 
them wind around and stay like the end of a whip. 
He kept to the east side of the street, his heavy 
shoes clocked every step on the boards, 
past the Oddfellows Hall beneath the Synagogue. 
Harley, a boy his age, across the street 
in Kinney's store, loaded the window with boxes.



83Two men burst from the Table Rock saloon 
and passed him noisily on the narrow walk.
At California he looked quickly across Oregon 
to the Post Office, quiet, then quicly crossed 
to the opposite corner and kept going north 
up Oregon to his house, truthless, truth 
a panther this time, still and dark and cunning, 
cruel, who waited somewhere in the dark branches 
above his knowing. Almost frantic he passed 
the depot, arrested, frozen, it seemed the hand 
of God held a brush and drew it over 
the world and as he blacked the mortal day 
the absence took a shape. He saw inside 
the dark, a purpled greenish-black, a familiar 
hand ignite a stick-match, draw it toward 
his face. The face beneath the tilted hat 
was near enough to touch but secret still, 
unrecognizable in the drastic shadow of the burning 
match, the forge glow of a lit cigar, 
the hieroglyphic whisp of smoke from the dead match. 
Nicolas saw his own face in the tip 
of the burning cigar that turned to grey and white 
and dropped in ash, releasing smoke in a figured 
curl that sent him rising to the top of the train car, 
torn to pieces as it escaped into the rushing 
night air through the top of the coach window. 
Suddenly back, he stumbled, righted himself.



84The Rogue Valley coach had pulled into 
the depot with a metal—to—metal whine and screach 
of the steam-whistle. Young John Barnum hopped 
down onto the platform, pulled the door 
open and the passengers spilled out, milled 
around the platform and headed off to do 
their business, little enough these hungry days. 
John, who was always kind, saw him, waved. 
He smiled, overfull, ducked his head 
and walked on. No truth was manifest 
but mystery married mystery weaving flowered 
boughs to screen the truth completely. When 
would God tear the curtain off this veiled world? 
He walked past the street his house lay on, 
and, half-unconsciously, drawn almost, 
ascended the twisting, rising road beyond 
the iron gate to the hill his father rested 
in, the Graveyard, crowned with tangled manzanita, 
red madrone with peeling bark that crunched 
beneath his feet. The day was hot but the breexe 
that blew through the shaded grove, past smooth 
soft stones, was cool like a woman’s hand 
on a fevered brow. He made his way through tall 
grasses, on the beaten paths, alone. He passed 
the digger's shack, empty, the door open. 
He heard the scrape and pat of a new grave 
born on the shovel's end far away



85through the trees. He turned his back to it, 
skirted the hill in the opposite direction, made 
his way to the shallow dell his father rested 
in, or occupied more rightly. Something 
told him resting wasn't peace to father, 
yet. A simple stone: George Lathrop - 
born in 1849 in Ashland, 
Ohio - died in 1901 in Jacksonville 
in Oregon - God Rest His Soul.
Carved by Thurmond with rough but steady hand, 
with a quiet, terrible, nordic strength and sorrow. 
Lovely. Nicolas lay down in the green grave 
and held the stone in his arms and cried and fell 
to sleep. 0 father.

The moon was bright, its edge 
was blue like burning liquor, dizzy in a break 
between the tangled limbs of the secret trees.; its 

light 
had seared an arc of white fire across 
the sleeping figure's back and shoulders - wings. 
Nicolas felt that frightening lightness, felt 
the lift of flight. It shook him bolt awake. 
"Father!" He shouted, echoed off the hard 
boles of trees. Wind arose that blew 
the leaves and needles, dirt and dry sheets 
of bark in a sudden scarring dark of storming



86air. He felt himself thrown down that dar 
like flying, like tossed through the angry roil 
of waves on a rudderless ship. The wind was roaring, 
roaring! Stumbled running carried him 
out the gate in a hail of blown gravel, 
a cloud of dirt and dust and sand. The gate 
swung to impossibly quick against 
the wind and a bolt of red-gold fire 
raced along the meeting edges, flew 
into the sky. The wind stopped, the blown 
debris settled, the wild fire ont the hill 
flickered out.

He understood the dreams.
His father came to him in sleep to promise 
vack the words that fled his voice when anger 
flew against it, like the mice that flee 
a barn when fire strikes. Beneath the sky, 
sturdy now except the stars that flickered 
like a thousand votive lamps, no doubt 
a simple bowl and wick, a brass reflector, 
each a human heart, as simple, burning 
though itself to find the light that's born 
of flame, the instant of transformation: soul, 
its purpose once achieved to rest like smoke 
in wind, the rest is artifact or ash, 
was warm and still. But out beyond the guilt,



beyond the fierce reversal of his father's 
sin, byond the hard—to—carry love 
of stone and God and iron, out beyond 
his father's pleas to leave them be, the men 
who hurt because they're hurt, who need the word, 
the«sacrificing kindness in the blood 
that, spattering their hands and faces, reawakens love 
and pity, sorrow, deep regret and longing, 
reawakens tears that trigger hands 
to reach and hold, caress and cherish, even 
past this bloody christing need is duty. 
Duty. Different then from love? Perhaps.
To carry Adam down the deep elective 
wire from the humming engine forged 
of brass inside the skull of genesis, 
through human minds, transforming junctures of 
divine conduction, toward an unseen but urgent 
end. Duty. Duty down the burning 
wick, the duty lies along the secret 
dark of rust and ground carnation. Where? 
A bolt was drawn, a rolling tumbler fell 
in place, his mind unlocked, another fire 
flew along the parting edges - home!
He ran to the sound of his shoes against the gravel, 
heavy leather thud. And then the sound 
of gravel rolling off the road into 
the bushes. Then quiet. A cricket. Nothing.



88

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Freedom or Death, Nikos Kazantzakis, 1955, Simon and 
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The Greek Passion, Nikos Kazantzakis, 1953, Simon and 
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Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1931, Aventine Press, New 
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Making Certain It Goes On, Richard Hugo, 1984, W.W. Norton, 
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Lights, San Francisco.

Rock and Hawk, Robinson Jeffers, 1977, Liveright, New York.
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Losada, Buenos Aires.
Selected Poems and Two Plays, W.B. Yeats, 1962, Macmillan, 

New York.
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York.
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