Or to Begin Again by Ann Lauterbach

I.
    The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.
    â€”EMERSON, “CIRCLES”

BIRD (THOREAU)
1.
    The great stalks are alert, their
shambles piled: maybe another parade.
    Â 
    Â 
    An evident gray, a slow march
and legions rudderless; an ordinary flow.
    Â 
    Â 
    These none of them quite real, none present,
like mischief in a dream: the blue garment, the rusty blade.
    Â 
    Â 
    Came late or have you come late or are you, you are late
then on into wakened sobriety’s itch.
    Â 
    Â 
    The great stalks move slightly. They press back.
Waiting folds upward into a shape
    Â 
    Â 
    to be seen later, or not seen, not now, not later.
Take hold of this garment, this was said.
    Â 
    Â 
    The thrust of these injunctions. Take hold of the blade.
2.
    Stepping man is stiff in the shade.
Let him be, or chop him down.
    Â 
    Â 
    At the far side of the miserable hill
an orchestra is rehearsing for the factory’s ball.
    Â 
    Â 
    As usual, a train is near, but there are no feet.
The wheels peel off into global dust
    Â 
    Â 
    and there is flesh, naked flesh, exposed to it.
Where were you? asks stepping man.
    Â 
    Â 
    Where are we? you answer, taking shelter.
In the other, invisible mode I glimpsed him
    Â 
    Â 
    walking away, toward the river, into a meadow.
The head of stepping man is bowed. He
    Â 
    Â 
    seems to be alone in history, alone in the brush.
3.
    Stepping man: cowed, immobile, an
invention of the nude season; an invention of
    Â 
    Â 
    new arrivals and the one tulip and
beating of the woman with a baseball bat.
    Â 
    Â 
    He stepped on her face .
Hear these enactments
    Â 
    Â 
    or forgo them in their temporal settings.
The material of the world? Will?
    Â 
    Â 
    How the Jesuit and the young woman
might have walked along an avenue in 1960
    Â 
    Â 
    and then, this long, this far away
in the tangle of the bare, emergent copse.
    Â 
    Â 
    Stepping man recalls Thoreau and is envious.
4.
    Drab us; lonely sequitur . Stepping man, distilled,
no more than a fake. Quaint acquisition, no
    Â 
    Â 
    more than material fiction
to see or not to see. He
    Â 
    Â 
    cannot look up, and the light
drifts across his shoulders
    Â 
    Â 
    as the river slinks on to curse
his rigid stride:
    Â 
    Â 
    New York, Albany, Troy, then
night and the music he might have known.
    Â 
    Â 
    Stepping man, burning ash, the bird’s
quick target— carries the sky on its back .

DEAR BLANK
    The instant quarantine on its shelf.
Deletion ranged upward, proto-winged,
enough to go on, as if singular.
To then, if it were then
it looks like you are writing a letter
interrupts Knowledge, whose source cannot
be owned. Try not to fall apart.
Try to stay on the case, in case you need to fall
into speech, example, It looks like you are writing
a letter . To whom it may concern.
To be then concerned.
    Â 
    Â 
    And so the unobserved passes through its glass
twilight. Hitched to its seam,
a spectacle tangles with a spider
caught among settings, conquests.
Nowhere does the announcement flair,
nowhere does the exception pertain.
The refrain, its indifference and scorn,
travels into the familiar trace of the already consumed.
Abstraction, the stagnant sign, becomes a wager.
    Â 
    Â 
    And yet, one wants to say and yet,
night will come down over the water
and the train will approach its final destination.
She will turn her attention to leisure—
the good car, the good china, the good rosé.
Some eccentric ground will form under the atmosphere
where the bones lie, where the burned books
nourish the lilac. She will recall a friend’s comment,
It looks like you are writing a letter.
Would you like help?
    Others escaped. They will not sign their names.
They will stay for a while on a Greek island
while a child is conceived in another country.
She will say that its name must be pronounced
the same in French as in English
in the vicinity of the letter, in the habit of grace,
like, or unlike, the