The Glass Constellation. Arthur Sze

      And the cellist

      soliloquizes on a white lotus

      in the rain.

      The violist discusses

      love, rage, and terror.

      And the second violinist reports on the latest coup

      in Afghanistan.

      A gazelle leaps

      in October light.

      I am dazzled.

      Magnetized

      Jimson weed

      has nothing to do

      with the blueprint of a house,

      or a white macaw.

      But an iron bar,

      magnetized, has a north and south

      pole that attract.

      Demagnetized, it has nothing

      at either end.

      The mind magnetizes

      everything it touches.

      A knife in a dog

      has nothing to do

      with the carburetor of an engine:

      to all appearances,

      to all appearances.

      Knife at the Jugular

      Sentenced to two consecutive

      life terms, Robert Francis may be

      paroled in twenty years. He may

      walk out of jail at forty,

      a free man. But the world travels

      at the speed of light.

      He will be a miner staggering

      out of a collapsed mine. People

      will have assumed he died

      years ago. And, at forty,

      the world will feel like jamais

      vu. The barbed wire and

      sunlight will be his only

      friends. Perhaps, he will discern

      freedom as a rat swimming in

      a ditch, or pleasure as the

      smell of green tea. And the full

      moon, crazed with the voices

      of dead men, will make him

      relive again and again the double

      ax murder. And will he know

      himself? The Inuit have

      thirty words describing varieties

      of ice. I see a man in

      twenty years walking into the

      sunlight. He will know a thousand

      words for varieties of pain.

      His first act may be a knife

      at the jugular, and his ensuing acts

      may be terrors of the earth.

      Pouilly-Fuissé

      1

      Foxes and pheasants adorn

      the store window. A woman sells

      dried anise, dried purple

      mallow, and caviar inside.

      But we don’t live on purple mallow,

      or Pouilly-Fuissé. I think

      of the Africans I met

      going to pick grapes at

      $1.40 an hour.

      2

      A man trying to sell roses

      throws water, and, instead of sprinkling,

      drenches the roses. And

      an old woman carrying leeks

      wears shoes at least three sizes too large,

      and walks almost crippled.

      But, then, they make a world of

      leeks and roses.

      Alba

      South light

      wakes us. I turn

      to your touch,

      your long hair, and

      slow kisses.

      A wren sings in

      the clear light.

      Red cassia

      blossoms in your

      hands. And all

      day the wren sings

      in the day’s

      branches.

      The Opal

      Nailing up chicken wire on the frame house,

      or using a chalk line, or checking a level at a glance

      gets to be easy.

      We install double-pane windows

      pressurized with argon between the panes

      for elevations over 4500’.

      And use pick and shovel

      to dig for the footing for the annex. Lay cinder blocks,

      and check levels. Pour the cement floor, and

      use wood float and steel trowel to finish the surface

      as it sets.

      Nailing into rough, dense, knotted

      two-by-twelves, or using a chalk line to mark the locations

      of the fire blocks, or checking the level of a

      stained eight-by-ten window header gets to be

      easier.

      In nailing up chicken wire, we learn

      how to cut for the canal, pull the wire up over the

      firewall, make cuts for the corners, tuck it

      around back, and nail two-head nails into the stud.

      And when the footing is slightly uneven and we are

      laying a first row of cinder blocks, find that a

      small pebble under a corner often levels the top

      to the row.

      And, starting on rock lath, the various

      stages of a house—cutting vigas, cleaning aspens for

      latillas, installing oak doors, or plastering the

      adobe wall—are facets of a cut opal.

      Pentimento