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When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.

The Emperor

MATTHEW ROHRER

She sends me a text

she’s coming home

the train emerges

from underground

I light the fire under

the pot, I pour her

a glass of wine

I fold a napkin under

a little fork

the wind blows the rain

into the windows

the emperor himself

is not this happy

Late Fragment

RAYMOND CARVER

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

From The First Morning of the Second World

DELMORE SCHWARTZ

. . . Quickly then and certainly it was the river of summer, blue as the

infinite curving blueness above us,

Little boats at anchor lolled or were lapped, and a yacht slowly

glided.

It was wholly holiday, holiday absolute, a silk and saraband day,

warm and gay and

Blue and white and vibrant as the pennants buoyant on the stadium

near us,

White, a milk whiteness, and also all the colors flaring, melting, or

flowing.

There hope was, and the hopes, and the years past,

The beings I had known and forgotten and half-remembered or

remembered too often,

Some in rowboats sunned, as on a picnic, or waiting, as before

a play,

the picnic and the play of eternity as summer, siesta, and summit

—How could I have known that the years and the hopes were

human beings hated or loved,

Or known that I knew less and more than I supposed I supposed?

(So I questioned myself, in a voice familiar and strange.)

There they were, all of them, and I was with them,

They were with me, and they were me, I was them, forever united

As we all moved forward in a consonance silent and moving

Seated and gazing,

Upon the beautiful river forever.

2

So we were as children on the painted wooden horses, rising and

falling, of the carnival’s carousel

Singing or smiling, at times, as the lyric of a small music tinkled

above us

Saying: “The task is the round, the round is the task, the task and

the round are a dance, and

There is nothing to think but drink of love and knowledge, and

love’s knowledge

When after and before are no more, and no more masks or un-

masking,

but only basking

(As the shining sea basks under the shining sun

In a radiance of swords and chandeliers dancing)

In the last love of knowledge, the first, when thought’s abdication quickens thought’s exaltation,

In the last blessing and sunlight of love’s knowledge.”

I hardly knew when my lips parted. Started to move slowly

As in the rehearsal of half-remembered memorized

anthem, prayer, or spell

of heartwelling gratitude and recognition.

My lips trembled, fumbled, and in the depths and death of thought

A murmur rose like the hidden humming of summer, when June

sleeps

In the radiant entrancings of warm light and green security.

Fumbling, feeling for what I had long supposed I had grasped and

cast aside as worthless,

the sparks or glitters of pleasure, trivial and transient.

—The phrases like faces came, lucid and vivid, separate, united,

sincere as pain

With the unity of meaning and emotion long lost, disbelieved or

denied,

As I sought with the words I had known a candid translation.

So I said then, in a language intimate and half-understood:

“I did not know . . . and I knew . . . surely I once knew . . .

I must have known . . .

Surely sometimes guessed at or suspected,

Knew and did not know what love is,

The measure of pleasure, heart of joy, the light and the heart of

the light

Which makes all pleasure, joy and love come to be

As light alone gives all colors being, the measure and the treasure

Of the light which unites and distinguishes the bondage and

freedom in unity and distinction

Which is love . . . Love? . . . Is love? What is love?”

Suddenly and certainly I saw how surely the measure and

treasure of pleasure is being as being with, belonging

Figured and touched in the experience of voices in chorus.

Withness