The great poet Calphoglus was not merely that peerless pedagogue of speech and dream with whom we are all so well acquainted. He was (and this is but one of the many obscure and hushed-up sides in the lives of poets) a great, nay, a very great, musician as well. 

   —What have you got there? I ask.
   He turns to me:
   —Lettere d’amore, he tells me.

The small American town, lost amid the limitless reaches of the Ayrton plains, found itself bereft of the profound tranquility to which it had been accustomed since the days, rather recent after all—say around 1867—of its founding. 

1. Three men. Two of them seated. The third, standing with his back turned to the room’s only window, permits his beautiful eyes to stray across an infinite space. His right arm is extended, as if he were saying something, as if there were something he wanted to say.

Ah, to rise one morning
With the ability
To strum a guitar

Last night
At Mother Tomas’,
We danced the

Today is beautiful the birds singing
in the trees where they have landed or in the air when
they are going, the sun wrapping its fingers

A cold rainy March morning came.
Two birds woke up and saw the sun
that comes up every morning

To take up where you left off!
without a breath of separation
your new movement is begun.

A courtier strides along, his feathers
straightening in the breeze. His boon
has been denied. From his clenched left