Desire’s Persistence
1
Devon House
Lamps have begun to light as evening,
alluvial, fills every crevice in the courtyard,
fills Devon House, alone with its marble columns,
its verandas and esplanades empty,
the plantation gone, and the fields,
the courtyard a tourist attraction now:
glass ashtrays etched with boys
too large to be clambering coconut trees,
Dew
None are more familiar with dew
than professional footballers. From early
grades they are used to running through
practice drills and hurling their burly
frames through rucks while the moist chaff
of wet grass under the winter lights
softens their fall, accustoms the half-
back to the slippery ball and writes
green cuneiform on wet sandshoes.
And they fear it in the morning,
Diameter
You love your friend, so you fly across the country to see her.
Your friend is grieving. When you look at her, you see that something’ s missing.
You look again. She seems all there: reading glasses, sarcasm, leather pumps.
What did you expect? Ruins? Demeter without arms in the British Museum?
Your friend says she believes there’ s more pain than beauty in the world.
When Persephone was taken, Demeter damned the world for half the year.
The other half remained warm and bountiful; the Greeks loved symmetry.
Dickhead
A man who’ s trying to be a good man
but isn’ t, because he can’ t not take
whatever’ s said to him as judgement.
It causes him, as he puts it, to react.
His face and neck redden and bloat,
a thick blue vein bulges up his forehead
and bisects his bald pate, scaring his children
but provoking hilarity at work
where one guy likes to get his goat
by pasting pro-choice bumper stickers
on his computer screen while he’ s in the john,
Did you ever see a bunny?
Did you ever see a bunny, a bunny, a bunny,
Did you ever see a bunny that hops so slow?
He hops, and hops, and hops, and hops,
Did you ever see a bunny that hops so slow?
Did you ever see a bunny, a bunny, a bunny,
Did you ever see a bunny that hops on one foot?
He hops, and hops, and hops, and hops,
Did you ever see a bunny that hops on one foot?
Did you ever see a bunny, a bunny, a bunny,
Did you ever see a bunny that hops so fast?
He hops, and hops, and hops, and hops,
Did you ever see a bunny that hops so fast?
Did You Ever See A Bunny?
Did you ever see a bunny, a bunny, a bunny
Did you ever see a bunny that hops so slow
He hops, and hops, and hops, and hops
Did you ever see a bunny that hops so slow
That hops so fast
That hops backwards
That hops on one foot
Did You Ever See a Lassie?
Did you ever see a lassie,
A lassie, a lassie?
Did you ever see a lassie,
Go this way and that?
Go this way and that way,
Go this way and that way.
Did you ever see a lassie,
Go this way and that?
Did you ever see a laddie,
A laddie, a laddie?
Did you ever see a laddie,
Go this way and that?
Go this way and that way,
Go this way and that way.
Did you ever see a laddie,
Go this way and that?
Diddle, Diddle, Dumpling, My Son John
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John,
Went to bed with his trousers on;
One shoe off, and the other shoe on,
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.
Die Verschwundenen/The Vanished
It wasn't the earth that swallowed them. Was it the air?
Numerous as the sand, they did not become
sand, but came to naught instead. They've been forgotten
in droves. Often, and hand in hand,
like minutes. More than us,
but without memorials. Not registered,
not cipherable from dust, but vanished —
their names, spoons, and footsoles.
They don't make us sorry. Nobody
can remember them: Were they born,
did they flee, have they died? They were