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Dear love, where the red lillies blossomed and grew, The white snows are falling; And all through the wood, where I wandered with you, The loud winds are calling; And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune, Neath the elm—you remember, Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June, And left us—December.

Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun, And false in the shadows. He has found new delights, in the land where he’s gone, Greener woodlands and meadows. What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea, Let it drift on the heather! We can sing through it all; I have you—you have me, And we’ll laugh at the weather.

The old year may die, and a new one be born That is bleaker and colder; But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn, For love makes us bolder. Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea, Thou friend in fair weather; But here is a song sung, that’s fuller of glee, By two warm hearts together.

A CS professor once explained recursion as follows: A child couldn’t sleep, so her mother told her a story about a little frog,     who couldn’t sleep, so the frog’s mother told her a story about a little bear,         who couldn’t sleep, so the bear’s mother told her a story about a little weasel…             who fell asleep.         …and the little bear fell asleep;     …and the little frog fell asleep; …and the child fell asleep.

for my mother

They are fleeting. They are fragile. They require

little water. They’ll surprise you. They’ll remind you

that they aren’t and they are you.

After you’ve learned to walk, Tell one thing from another, Your first care as a child Is to get used to your name. What is it? They keep asking you. You hesitate, stammer, And when you start to give a fluent answer Your name’s no longer a problem.

When you start to forget your name, It’s very serious. But don’t despair, An interval will set in.

And soon after your death, When the mist rises from your eyes, And you begin to find your way In the everlasting darkness, Your first care (long forgotten, Long since buried with you) Is to get used to your name. You’re called — just as arbitrarily — Dandelion, cowslip, cornel, Blackbird, chaffinch, turtle dove, Costmary, zephyr — or all these together. And when you nod, to show you’ve got it, Everything’s all right: The earth, almost round, may spin Like a top among stars.

let there be new flowering in the fields let the fields turn mellow for the men let the men keep tender through the time let the time be wrested from the war let the war be won let love be at the end

The time will come When, with elation, You will greet yourself arriving At your own door, in your own mirror, And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored For another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes, Peel your image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places

yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skilfully curled) all worlds

If I met you face to face, I would retrace—erase!—my heartbreak, pain by pain, ache by ache, word by word, point by point. In search of you—just your face!—I roam through the streets lost in disgrace, house to house, lane to lane, place to place, door to door. My heart hopeless—broken,crushed!—I heard it pound, till blood gushed from me, fountain by fountain, stream by stream, river by river, sea by sea. The garden of your lips—your cheeks!— your perfumed hair, I wonder there, bloom to bloom, rose to rose, petal to petal, scent to scent. Your eyebrow—your eye!—and the mole on your face, somehow they tie me, trait to trait, kindness to kindness, passion to passion, love to love. While I grieve, with love—your love!—I will reweave the fabric of my soul, stitch by stitch, thread by thread, warp by warp, woof by woof. Last, I—Tahirih—searched my heart, I looked line by line. What did I find? You and you, you and you, you and you.

A tomato I overlooked on the window ledge, remembers the hold of vine, the brace of ground, and puts down roots inside its own flesh.

Halved under the blade of my knife, the tomato unbinds its shoots, sends them into an abyss of air and light—

Here at my desk I sit remembering, putting down words far from the vine of a native tongue, as if they could be roots,

each, like the tomato with its faith curlicued in pale inward shoots, calling to itself, back to the source of fruit.

Finnish rural life, ca. 1910

Fires, always fires after midnight, the sun depending in the purple birches

and gleaming like a copper kettle. By the solstice they’d burned everything,

the bad-luck sleigh, a twisted rocker, things “possessed” and not-quite-right.

The bonfire coils and lurches, big as a house, and then it settles.

The dancers come, dressed like rainbows (if rainbows could be spun),

and linking hands they turn to the melancholy fiddles.

A red bird spreads its wings now and in the darker days to come.

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course you’re tired. Every atom in you has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes nonstop from mitosis to now. Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch by inch America is giving itself to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch. You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow, Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle, Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town and History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

I have hidden inside a sea shell but forgotten in which.

Now daily I dive, filtering the sea through my fingers, to find myself. Sometimes I think a giant fish has swallowed me. Looking for it everywhere I want to make sure it will get me completely.

The sea-bed attracts me, and I’m repelled by millions of sea shells that all look alike. Help, I am one of them. If only I knew, which.

How often I’ve gone straight up to one of them, saying: That’s me. Only, when I prised it open it was empty.

At a desk made of glass, In a glass walled-room With red airport carpet,

An officer asked My father for fingerprints, And my father refused,

So another offered him tea And he sipped it. The teacup Template for fingerprints.

My father says, it was just Hot water with a bag. My father says, in his country,

Because the earth knows The scent of history, It gave the people sage.

I like my tea with sage From my mother’s garden, Next to the snapdragons

She calls fishmouths Coming out for air. A remedy For stomach pains she keeps

In the kitchen where She always sings. First, she is Hagar

Boiling water Where tea is loosened. Then she drops

In it a pinch of sage And lets it sit a while. She tells a story:

The groom arrives late To his wedding Wearing only one shoe.

The bride asks him About the shoe. He tells her He lost it while jumping

Over a house-wall. Breaking away from soldiers. She asks:

Tea with sage Or tea with mint?

With sage, he says, Sweet scent, bitter tongue. She makes it, he drinks.

What happened is, we grew lonely living among the things, so we gave the clock a face, the chair a back, the table four stout legs which will never suffer fatigue.

We fitted our shoes with tongues as smooth as our own and hung tongues inside bells so we could listen to their emotional language,

and because we loved graceful profiles the pitcher received a lip, the bottle a long, slender neck.

Even what was beyond us was recast in our image; we gave the country a heart, the storm an eye, the cave a mouth so we could pass into safety.