Acres of fire, forests disassembling.
A girl has just crossed the ocean
in a ship powered by solar panels
and hydro generators. Every Friday
when she conducts her Liebestraüme,
you can hear the cries of whales
and glaciers floating like placards
above the crowd; she is their standard-
bearer. Bankers peer from glass
towers, pretending they are merely
checking if food trucks have arrived
at the lobby. They click teaspoons
against cups secretaries bring
into the room. Light glances off
hundreds of panes of glass,
as well as off external elevators;
but can you see this brittle world
whorled in a snail's carapace?
I don't know how many varietals
of coffee there are in the Americas,
if we can still use words like
capsicum and salt and ferrous oxide.
Wading birds still come to the edge
of the river, though I can't
remember when it last rained.
In winter, ghosts of foxes streak
across the meadow: their pelts thin,
their voices rubbed like kindling.
Dream, With Rowboats and Stone Fruit
I dream of rowboats dry-docked
in my garden, their oars clipped
like wings at their sides.
In the afternoons, where
chrysanthemums and clover grew,
how the quiet begins to thicken
as the light drops. Did we really
row all this way, and are we here
now after so many years? An owl
visits the same tree each night: why
doesn't it seem to have aged? What will
I do when the wood withers and night-
calls of birds rise above the wells
of human speech, when the plums
that were green can't hold their stones
anymore and just deepen into sweetness?
Spotted owl
Up, and to the office, where much business and Sir W. Coventry there, who of late hath wholly left us, most of our business being about money, to which we can give no answer, which makes him weary of coming to us. He made an experiment to-day, by taking up a heape of petitions that lay upon the table. They proved seventeen in number, and found them thus: one for money for reparation for clothes, four desired to have tickets made out to them, and the other twelve were for money. Dined at home, and sister Balty with us. My wife snappish because I denied her money to lay out this afternoon; however, good friends again, and by coach set them down at the New Exchange, and I to the Exchequer, and there find my business of my tallys in good forwardness. I passed down into the Hall, and there hear that Mr. Bowles, the grocer, after 4 or 5 days’ sickness, is dead, and this day buried. So away, and taking up my wife, went homewards. I ‘light and with Harman to my mercer’s in Lumbard Streete, and there agreed for, our purple serge for my closett, and so I away home. So home and late at the office, and then home, and there found Mr. Batelier and his sister Mary, and we sat chatting a great while, talking of witches and spirits, and he told me of his own knowledge, being with some others at Bourdeaux, making a bargain with another man at a taverne for some clarets, they did hire a fellow to thunder (which he had the art of doing upon a deale board) and to rain and hail, that is, make the noise of, so as did give them a pretence of undervaluing their merchants’ wines, by saying this thunder would spoil and turne them. Which was so reasonable to the merchant, that he did abate two pistolls per ton for the wine in belief of that, whereas, going out, there was no such thing. This Batelier did see and was the cause of to his profit, as is above said.
By and by broke up and to bed.
a who who to which
we can give no answer
the snappish owl
is dead and buried
we ward off witches and spirits
with the noise of profit
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 21 August 1666.
Pro rogue
Waked this morning, about six o’clock, with a violent knocking at Sir J. Minnes’s doore, to call up Mrs. Hammon, crying out that Sir J. Minnes is a-dying. He come home ill of an ague on Friday night. I saw him on Saturday, after his fit of the ague, and then was pretty lusty. Which troubles me mightily, for he is a very good, harmless, honest gentleman, though not fit for the business. But I much fear a worse may come, that may be more uneasy to me.
Up, and to Deptford by water, reading “Othello, Moore of Venice,” which I ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good play, but having so lately read “The Adventures of Five Houres,” it seems a mean thing.
Walked back, and so home, and then down to the Old Swan and drank at Betty Michell’s, and so to Westminster to the Exchequer about my quarter tallies, and so to Lumbard Streete to choose stuff to hang my new intended closet, and have chosen purple. So home to dinner, and all the afternoon till almost midnight upon my Tangier accounts, getting Tom Wilson to help me in writing as I read, and at night W. Hewer, and find myself most happy in the keeping of all my accounts, for that after all the changings and turnings necessary in such an account, I find myself right to a farthing in an account of 127,000l.. This afternoon I visited Sir J. Minnes, who, poor man, is much impatient by these few days’ sickness, and I fear indeed it will kill him.
this violent knocking
of an armless man
not fit for the business at Westminster
almost midnight
and we find all accounts
turning into a fart
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 20 August 1666.
Landscape of Always Burning
War is old, we're told; it's the oldest
thing in the books. In that case the animals
have always fled deeper into the forest;
just when they cross someone lights a torch
and tosses it into the grove. In that case,
the lumad have always been on the run, wrapping
their betel nut boxes in cloth, tucking
their brass amulets under their waistbands,
in the folds of their hair. It's medicine we need
and can't squander, because who knows how long
this one will last. Ask the water to bless you.
Keep a pellet of earth under your tongue.
Who do you love? Whose hand do you take
as the sun goes dark? I count the heads
of my children as I push them out of the door.
We will be together until we can't anymore.
Ritual
(Lord’s day). Up and to my chamber, and there began to draw out fair and methodically my accounts of Tangier, in order to shew them to the Lords. But by and by comes by agreement Mr. Reeves, and after him Mr. Spong, and all day with them, both before and after dinner, till ten o’clock at night, upon opticke enquiries, he bringing me a frame he closes on, to see how the rays of light do cut one another, and in a darke room with smoake, which is very pretty. He did also bring a lanthorne with pictures in glasse, to make strange things appear on a wall, very pretty. We did also at night see Jupiter and his girdle and satellites, very fine, with my twelve-foote glasse, but could not Saturne, he being very dark. Spong and I had also several fine discourses upon the globes this afternoon, particularly why the fixed stars do not rise and set at the same houre all the yeare long, which he could not demonstrate, nor I neither, the reason of. So, it being late, after supper they away home.
But it vexed me to understand no more from Reeves and his glasses touching the nature and reason of the several refractions of the several figured glasses, he understanding the acting part, but not one bit the theory, nor can make any body understand it, which is a strange dullness, methinks.
I did not hear anything yesterday or at all to confirm either Sir Thos. Allen’s news of the 10 or 12 ships taken, nor of the disorder at Amsterdam upon the news of the burning of the ships, that he should be fled to the Prince of Orange, it being generally believed that he was gone to France before.
the methodical clock
loses the light
dark things appear on a wall
the stars do not rise
touching can make a body
understand disorder
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 19 August 1666, and inspired by the documentary Hail Satan?.
A Deterioration
Nightly I visit this book, this story,
wondering how it will end; it keeps
winding back to a group of frames,
to a time before the fruit in the tree
had not fallen and cracked open
like a wound on dark ground, to a time
after her lover's ghost took two sips
of coffee tainted with the poison of
certain death. Even the ghost of the cab
driver wondering who phoned the garage
at six every Friday evening keeps
coming back. How do they do it,
and not lose their minds? When she
finally entered the house again,
she'd twirl her wedding band
and engagement ring absently round
and round; loose even then, or
because she always had long, tapered
fingers. She liked to boast about
her tiny waistline, how she looked
in her wedding dress and there was no
mistaking they weren't doing it
because of a so-called accident. She grew
to like tapping the chiseled points of finger-
nails on the table whenever she was bored
or was allowed nothing more to say. But
she knew how to scream and moan: she'd work
herself into such a state that fainting was
always the logical next step. Thinking
of her now, I can only see that wound-up
energy with nowhere to go: the points
of her knees, the edge to her voice, all
of her youth and possessions lost, her mind
a skittish bird trapped in the fire.
Street culture
All the morning at my office; then to the Exchange (with my Lord Bruncker in his coach) at noon, but it was only to avoid Mr. Chr. Pett’s being invited by me to dinner. So home, calling at my little mercer’s in Lumbard Streete, who hath the pretty wench, like the old Queene, and there cheapened some stuffs to hang my roome, that I intend to turn into a closett. So home to dinner, and after dinner comes Creed to discourse with me about several things of Tangier concernments and accounts, among others starts the doubt, which I was formerly aware of, but did wink at it, whether or no Lanyon and his partners be not paid for more than they should be, which he presses, so that it did a little discompose me; but, however, I do think no harm will arise thereby. He gone, I to the office, and there very late, very busy, and so home to supper and to bed.
street like the queen
a cheap creed to wink at
whether or not we think
harm will arise there
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 18 August 1666.
Shoal
“Why take more than we need? Because we can.”
- Richard Siken
You say something in a conversation
that goes unacknowledged; then, a couple
of beats later, someone says virtually
the same thing and everyone is like Yeah!
or That’s brilliant! The price of halfway
accommodation is invisibility and vice-
versa. Or the price of declaring your
intentions is the naturalization of
your place in the scheme of things.
In the Museum of Natural History,
once you found your way to a basement
depository where tagged and numbered
specimens of fish were suspended
in large gray vats. You looked at
the ink-stained ledgers, the dates,
the sites of capture: Palumbanes
Islands, Luzon; Mindoro, up and down
the archipelago and its straits. Blue-
green and silver, coral-red, bituminous.
Try to scoop up a handful of minnows
and they shimmer away, indignant.
Poachers
Up and betimes with Captain Erwin down by water to Woolwich, I walking alone from Greenwich thither, making an end of the “Adventures of Five Hours,” which when all is done is the best play that ever I read in my life. Being come thither I did some business there and at the Rope Yarde, and had a piece of bride-cake sent me by Mrs. Barbary into the boate after me, she being here at her uncle’s, with her husband, Mr. Wood’s son, the mast-maker, and mighty nobly married, they say, she was, very fine, and he very rich, a strange fortune for so odd a looked mayde, though her hands and body be good, and nature very good, I think.
Back with Captain Erwin, discoursing about the East Indys, where he hath often been. And among other things he tells me how the King of Syam seldom goes out without thirty or forty thousand people with him, and not a word spoke, nor a hum or cough in the whole company to be heard. He tells me the punishment frequently there for malefactors is cutting off the crowne of their head, which they do very dexterously, leaving their brains bare, which kills them presently. He told me what I remember he hath once done heretofore: that every body is to lie flat down at the coming by of the King, and nobody to look upon him upon pain of death. And that he and his fellows, being strangers, were invited to see the sport of taking of a wild elephant, and they did only kneel, and look toward the King. Their druggerman did desire them to fall down, for otherwise he should suffer for their contempt of the King. The sport being ended, a messenger comes from the King, which the druggerman thought had been to have taken away his life; but it was to enquire how the strangers liked the sport. The druggerman answered that they did cry it up to be the best that ever they saw, and that they never heard of any Prince so great in every thing as this King. The messenger being gone back, Erwin and his company asked their druggerman what he had said, which he told them. “But why,” say they, “would you say that without our leave, it being not true?” — “It is no matter for that,” says he, “I must have said it, or have been hanged, for our King do not live by meat, nor drink, but by having great lyes told him.”
In our way back we come by a little vessel that come into the river this morning, and says he left the fleete in Sole Bay, and that he hath not heard (he belonging to Sir W. Jenings, in the fleete) of any such prizes taken as the ten or twelve I inquired about, and said by Sir W. Batten yesterday to be taken, so I fear it is not true.
So to Westminster, and there, to my great content, did receive my 2000l. of Mr. Spicer’s telling, which I was to receive of Colvill, and brought it home with me [to] my house by water, and there I find one of my new presses for my books brought home, which pleases me mightily. As, also, do my wife’s progresse upon her head that she is making.
So to dinner, and thence abroad with my wife, leaving her at Unthanke’s ; I to White Hall, waiting at the Council door till it rose, and there spoke with Sir W. Coventry, who and I do much fear our Victuallers, they having missed the fleete in their going. But Sir W. Coventry says it is not our fault, but theirs, if they have not left ships to secure them. This he spoke in a chagrin sort of way, methought. After a little more discourse of several businesses, I away homeward, having in the gallery the good fortune to see Mrs. Stewart, who is grown a little too tall, but is a woman of most excellent features.
The narrative of the late expedition in burning the ships is in print, and makes it a great thing, and I hope it is so.
So took up my wife and home, there I to the office, and thence with Sympson the joyner home to put together the press he hath brought me for my books this day, which pleases me exceedingly. Then to Sir W. Batten’s, where Sir Richard Ford did very understandingly, methought, give us an account of the originall of the Hollands Bank, and the nature of it, and how they do never give any interest at all to any person that brings in their money, though what is brought in upon the public faith interest is given by the State for.
The unsafe condition of a Bank under a Monarch, and the little safety to a Monarch to have any; or Corporation alone (as London in answer to Amsterdam) to have so great a wealth or credit, it is, that makes it hard to have a Bank here. And as to the former, he did tell us how it sticks in the memory of most merchants how the late King (when by the war between Holland and France and Spayne all the bullion of Spayne was brought hither, one-third of it to be coyned; and indeed it was found advantageous to the merchant to coyne most of it), was persuaded in a strait by my Lord Cottington to seize upon the money in the Tower, which, though in a few days the merchants concerned did prevail to get it released, yet the thing will never be forgot.
So home to supper and to bed, understanding this evening, since I come home, that our Victuallers are all come in to the fleete, which is good newes.
Sir John Minnes come home tonight not well, from Chatham, where he hath been at a pay, holding it at Upnor Castle, because of the plague so much in the towne of Chatham. He hath, they say, got an ague, being so much on the water.
whichever king or malefactor
kills a wild elephant
they take his life
like a never-heard river
an ungoing
ungrown narrative
of a thing they do in the sticks
when the war is all here
holding us
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 17 August 1666.