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It is pleasant, very pleasant, to sit at a wooden booth
surrounded by parrots, wheels, right-turning conch shells,
the victory banner and the endless knot,
the lotus, the treasure vase, the golden fishes —
is this not so? Is it not pleasant
to sip Tsingtao beer, or Zhujiang, or Yanjing,
and tap your fingers on the bamboo mats?
After we’ ve drunk enough, there will be Buddhist Delight,
Mongolian beef side dishes, a whole host of sauces,
even some pizza and chicken wings if children are present,

This isn’ t maths —
perhaps it is
a collapse
of certainties.

Perhaps it can’ t
configure planes,
yet it can cloud
our blue remains

so when we fall
as rain will do,
nothing fails
to carry through.

capable of feeling
while in contact with another?

I look at the red-tiled roofs outside,
at all the angles

facing the white-blue cloudless sky
like the creases in Bellini’ s angel’ s

silver-blue dress, Tintoretto’ s white one
that’ s practically transparent in his

Annunciazione at the San Rocco
— cloth complex as thought!

Then the bells start, flood the void.

scent of myrrh on the handles
when oil is in the lock
silken is his mouth
when he is hard upon me

young heart, green bed,
his fingers are in the stream
he eats of the bitter honey
the sweetness of cherry

sacrament of the blood
and of its winding
sacrament of arrival
and of its binding

Chewing slowly,
Only after I’ d eaten
My grandmother,
Mother,
Son-in-law,
Two brothers-in-law,
And father-in-law
(His big family included)
In that order,
And had for dessert
The town’ s inhabitants,

Did I find, says Kabir,
The beloved that I’ ve become
One with.

We are stretched out on a dingy sofa, and I think
I must be barefoot because a woman whom no one knows
Is massaging the ankle of one leg of mine and the instep
Of the other, all this toward morning, and I have that
Occasional epiphany one has while still asleep
That I am floating down a river
Because I am so happy and all the dismal issues
Have been made tractable at last, and so I say to her
That the late symphonies of Gustav Mahler
Are more lucid if you’ re sitting close to, and above,

You had a woodchuck and an opium ball.
The one ate through the furniture,
the other sat in its cage depressing me.
Now the woodchuck sheds its skin.
I have a cow behind the Dollar Bin.

You shouldn’ t drink diarrhea
unless you bring enough for everybody.
Turn it into a teaching moment.
Asian-American Students for Christ
have the room until 2:30.

Conchita debemos to speak totalmente in English
cuando we go into Sears okayPor qué
Porque didn’ t you hear lo que pasóIt say
on the eleven o’ clock news anoche que two robbers
was caught in Sears and now this is the part
I’ m not completely segura que I got everything
porque channel 2 tiene tú sabes that big fat guy
that’ s hard to understand porque his nose sit on his lip
like a elefante pues the point es que the robbers the police say

"Myrtle loves Harry" — It is sometimes hard to remember a thing like that,
Hard to think about it, and no one knows what to do with it when he has it,
So write it out on a billboard that stands under the yellow light of an "L" platform among popcorn wrappers and crushed cigars,
A poster that says "Mama I Love Crispy Wafers So."
Leave it on a placard where somebody else gave the blonde lady a pencil moustache, and another perplexed citizen deposited:
"Jesus Saves. Jesus Saves."
One can lay this bundle down there with the others,

But that dashing, dauntless, delphic, diehard, diabolic cracker likes his fiction turned with a certain elegance and wit; and that anti-anti-anti-slum-congestion clublady prefers romance;
Search through the mothballs, comb the lavender and lace;
Were her desires and struggles futile or did an innate fineness bring him at last to a prouder, richer peace in a world gone somehow mad?