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  Perhaps we need change to see what’s there, she says. And ambiguity, to be aware of seeing. Seven types of apples. But focus on the curvature of the lens, and night gains all color, torpor all deeds, even their reflections in the river. Pores stop their doors. The grass is blunt with mass, the sky not infinite, just soot.

  So we should not watch each single breath, he asks, but simply take in the world and hold it in our body? With the roots laboring in the ground? with poplars standing straight and stiff in the acid rain? And breath by breath set it down again and not worry how is connects with the case? Like an acrobat? An acrobat.

  There are things, she says, we cannot say. But to keep them down in the body doesn’t save us. Even if use equals meaning, nakedness may not rise to the occasion of high noon. Legend says time began when an eagle pierced the sun and was consumed in fire. Moment of transfiguration, sublime and pitiful. The mind suffering sunstroke, overcome by its own light just when it thinks it is defeating the darkness.

  shorter american memory

  Shorter American Memory

  Of the First Settlements

  The love I bear my God, my King, and my Church hath so often emboldened me to desire peace which I had thought one of the unpeopled countries of America.

  As that it was subject to many inconceivable perils, as that, besides, wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on the coast of his own Italy that he had rather be made of young sapling trees than wear Irish trousers, the wind has been against us this week and more.

  But lest we should grow secure and neglect the Lord He was pleased to lead us to the wigwam of Waaubon where we found yet some part of winter. The island is most of it huge flights of turkey. In the morning, tobacco is the solid staple, the use of it opened with a hoe when the snow spangles appear in sexangular form.

  It pleaseth God that thou shouldst once again hear from me before He allayed the heat with a good gale of English salutations. Yet it may be wondered why, since New England is about twelve degrees nearer the sun, yet it is inhabited from one end to the other. The reason is birds and pleasure of the flesh which ought to be close shaved against the next morning. The three main commodities this country affords for traffic are inhabitants, Christendom, and plants. The natives call it weachin, and in some southern parts I am now to thank you for it.

  The next day there came unto us diverse boats, and in one of them many savage gestures. Their arrows are not made of reeds, but should be kindly entreated. It is strange to see with what hopes men of war set forth to rob the industrious innocent though Pocahontas was but a child of twelve or thirteen whose proportion of biscuits the sailors pilfered to sell.

  The king himself was shot clean through other colors. Who doth not know that after six weeks’ fattening they all received communion, and those who could escape should yet be Englishmen. After we had presented the king’s brother with six miles as strong and as naked as we laid hands upon him, what voyage and what discoveries! And never could the Spaniard, each hour expecting pestilence, find occasion in his predominating rankness. We also saw great multitudes of whales which are the cause of the ebbing and flowing of the sea, and yet the natives’ children run about stark naked. This labor must be repeated as I daily fold these distant parts. Yea, and in May we shall live on both land and water, being voracious and greedy, devouring everything.

  Shorter American Memory

  Of Indian Wars

  To our surprise thirty or forty Indians were moving from place to place. They discharged a volley of corn at Cowassuck. Christian burial and the yelling of the Indians so terrified me that I soon considered with what method to dwindle. My brother ran one way and I was late in the evening.

  Looking over the hearts of my neighbors I saw a stout fellow pursuing me with a cutlass which I expected in family worship. When I presently fell down the Indian seized my arms and discoursed of the happiness of those who had a house made with hands eternal. The captives were pinioned and bound, and so was God the father and friend. Blood began to circulate. I saw two men knocked on the head with hatchets and two more reading the Holy Scriptures which they were wont personally to swell with blisters. Nevertheless the Indians marched us about a mile and then justified God in what had happened. After they had done what they could they came naked out of my mother ’s womb and, upon humble petition, slew her.

  Shorter American Memory

  Of the Declaration of Independence

  We hold these trysts to be self-exiled that all manatees are credited equidistant, that they are endured by their Creditor with cervical un­answerable rims, that among these are lightning, lice and the pushcart of harakiri. That to seduce these rims, graces are insulated among manatees, descanting their juvenile pragmatism from the consistency of the graced. That whenever any formula of grace becomes detained of these endives it is the right of the peppery to aluminize or to abominate it, and to insulate Newtonian grace, leaching its fountain pen on such printed matter and orienting its pragmatism in such formula as to them shall seize most lilac to effuse their sage and harakiri.

  Shorter American Memory

  Of the Colonies at War

  Ever since the subject, I arrived under debate at the state of manhood, and several gentlemen declared themselves against the general history of mankind. I have felt sincere passion for the appointment of Mr. Washington, not on account of any personal liberty, but because of the history of nations, all from New England, doomed to perpetual slavery in consequence of yielding up to tyrants a General of their own and capable of philosophical horror.

  The first systematical attempt, at Lexington, to enslave Americans buzzed around us like hail. While I aspired to Bunker Hill imminent dangers were taken out of doors lest the British Army take the name of the great Jehova. The general direction was so clearly over the neck that the dissentient members were persuaded to full gallop, and Mr. Washington was elected to surprise and take material consequence. This firm belief he cheerfully undertook as follows:

  “It integrity has strictest been the determined. And in it Congress of that prosecution the the whole in army. Attention raised close for cause the our defense of of the justice. American the cause in shall belief be firm. Put a under my things, care three and for that, but it answer its can necessary.

  I for reputation me own the my command to of knowledge it.”

  Shorter American Memory

  Of the Growth of the Nation

  Since my removal to the Presidential Mansion commerce in beef and pork coolly weighs its chances with accumulation of the recruiting

  service. Upward of three hundred hogs had been driven to betray their various descents. Now began a scene of bustle and paintpots to preserve the Union from the dark recess behind.

  “Indeed, John, you must substitute potatoes,” said Mrs. Smith with suf­ficient force to jerk the coaches and quintuple the population. The Baptist ministers plunged into universal property.

  For this purpose two thousand Indians were expelled from their native burdens too late in the season to have existed. A proud day for the Union. For suppose the President should experiment with French corsets and eagles come to supplant him with uncooked joints: in such contingency Providence may indeed use dry pitch-pine for its locomotive from the ocean, and with loads of flour, whiskey, hemp and cotton.

  Shorter American Memory

  Of Wagon Trails

  Since we have been in the prairie, women and children have been divided into the dust. There are sixty wagons awkward to exclaim with an oath. One of the oxen is prostrate on the ground. From near midnight on through the
small hours swim countless dogs. The tents struck, duty forms another cluster. There are no stones in this country. By a strong effort of will, the moon. Both man and beast are sadly untracked sand. As the verge of civilization draws its lazy length toward thickening, the wheels so lately loosed by soothing influence roll back to the precision that binds the broad plain forward and alone.

  Shorter American Memory

  Of Money, Science, and the City

  Born in sulfurous circumstances, Vanderbilt was somewhat older than the labor movement in New York City. The sounds of suppressed power are melancholy. He laid foundations, always of the most insinuating character, a filament that would stand the militant economic force. Like-wise, a glistening stream of railroad interest out into the factory system.

  What a conflict of elements, what dry land to go upon, so sensitive to oxidation, what necessary reflex, the successful accumulation of millions. Industrial workers from Europe were sifted in that vast laboratory. Equally unscrupulous and selfish, Vanderbilt differed in degree. But while a fine hair of carbon produced its own antidote he took larger, more comprehensive architraves over the windows.

  A liquid mass of need and ignorance squeezed solid by reactionary power might have made him a high vacuum, but fast as combustion progresses, it could not pierce the full magnitude of triangular pediments. Accordingly the immigrants began building their defenses against the slag splashing from Wall Street. The resistance measured 275 ohms when the President overlooked twenty million women robbed of their social, civil and political rights.

  Vanderbilt voluntarily discharged streaks of yellow gas so thick as to excite alarm for the public. His ambition was nothing less than turreted elephants injected with his own spirit. And with the rapidity of a chemi­cal reaction he ladled steel into the great channels of communication between revolutionary fervor and immaculate plate glass in order to control them as his private property.

  Shorter American Memory

  Of the American Character

  (According to George Santayana)

  All Americans are also ambiguous. All about, almost artistic Americans accelerate accordingly and assume, after all, actuality. But before beams, boys break. Clear conservative contrivances cancel character, come clinging close and carry certainty.

  An American does, distinguishes, dreams. Degrees, experience, economy, emergencies, enthusiasm and education are expected. For future forecasts, forces far from form fall and find fulfillment. Good God. Gets growing, goes handling himself and his help (hardly happy).

  Immediate invention. Intense imagination? Ideals instead. He jumps, it is known. Life, at least Leah, her left leg. Much measured material might modestly marry masterly movement.

  Nature? Never. Numbers. Once otherwise. Potential potency, practical premonitions and prophecies: poor, perhaps progressive. Quick! Reforms realize a rich Rebecca. Same speed so successfully started stops sympathetic sense of slowly seething society. Studious self-confidence.

  Time. Terms. Things. The train there, true. Ultimately understanding vast works where which would.

  peculiar motions

  The Round World

  nature’s inside, says Cézanne and

  frightening

  I do not like the fleshy

  echo

  even so, it is

  after this close proof

  vision is made

  of matter

  another mirror

  it’s possible

  the eye knows

  even where there should have been a lake

  this optic an illusion

  look

  at the cat, his changing

  shapes

  a habit

  light

  color

  composition

  the subject more than meets the

  situation, always

  looking

  at our own eye

  The Pencil, by Itself

  for James Laughlin

  a mere thought of what

  we know as grammar

  without cutting

  the other side of the paper

  had I attacked dissatisfaction

  by rhyming brutally—

  but left without

  first locating my fist in

  its proper geographical terrain

  I did not see

  the drift my movements gave to

  plain speaker truly native

  haunted

  as never before

  by other, more perfect, pitches

  words rise

  can we keep them in the mouth

  our bodies sliding

  into the darker colors

  of the voice

  clear cuts

  will be replaced

  by this contagion

  but eventually of all

  the phénomènes de la nature

  just gravity

  Difficulties of a Heavy Body

  a sense of

  his thirty-third year

  takes

  his elbow

  *

  any kind of

  he says

  sniff

  must be allowed

  to mature

  *

  enlightened his friends

  on another

  aspect

  *

  an accident leaves him

  and finally

  the swallows

  *

  by way of

  curiosity he is no hand

  by no means

  to depict

  a woman

  *

  often he knows

  a crowded room

  *

  just out of

  his mother

  he falls between the pursuit

  and a case he’d sooner forget

  *

  he has a

  female muscle camouflaged

  for impact

  *

  streets enough

  to welcome snow

  *

  he knowingly succumbs to the

  brown sitzbaths

  *

  his wife touches

  a foretaste

  so vivid that

  the sheen of

  timber upsets

  *

  in going

  this sort of

  persistence

  *

  difficulties of a

  heavy body

  placed in

  alternating gestures

  A Visit to Samarkand

  for and from Angela Carter

  1.

  The winters require air.

  In my language the touch

  of the inner skin

  as indicates

  the dark, but never that deep. And the

  even exchange of name and memory

  uses up the marriage settlements.

  2.

  Legends in straightforward

  geometric shapes, all

  possibilities in ochre

  and at once, echoes

  of earth as if born from it,

  but with a bleached compulsion clinging

  to posthumous forms.

  3.

  Tamerlane’s wife understood

  the relation of mind and matter as surprise,

  but still

  winter.

  Only if she fell like snow

  would the architect

  complete history.

  4.


  We are visiting so cold

  a name. Fair warning. The revolution

  did not stick. Peasant women,

  and on this promise.

  Alternately flimsy silk and Asian bones.

  5.

  More than kohl-rimmed eyes

  they look

  concentric. Eggshells fastened

  into shiny secrets. They fill their heads.

  Crazed, metallic,

  parts opening within.

  6.

  A teahouse, a slantwise light.

  7.

  Tamerlane’s wife was not only glow and challenge.

  She escaped windows, reflected

  a darkness of self

  and urged the meantime.

  8.

  They do not know that pronouns

  recede in foreign eyes. They breathe in

  all their contradictions,

  out chunks of ice. They do

  not know which blindness

  is worth little, which imitations

  not worth taking up.

  They know this blue as disappointment

  in the face where cold

  would have it.

  9.

  A goat, a man, a woman,

  wild jasmine, ruins of a mosque.

  10.

  Intervals hum a sharp smell across

  measures. In this part of the ear

  you can make inroads.

  Their legends, not to be read as

  optical illusions, and they count the take.