‘The land is holy’ was as close as you came
to ‘Melancholy’. It changed you at the beach, Eddie -

Surrounded by the blur of her own movements, the
thought of making him happy was very dear to her.

The red dress twisted under her is the last of
her mother’s history. You want to keep her
always. Every noon you carry her from the house

Foremost in slaughter, Jonathan
                  Dipped his lance
Idly into a stray honeycomb

That far rise drifting in its first mute buds
Brightens and freezes through binoculars,
Shadeless grain of the giver. As if grown

Impossible to stand. Or to sit.
Impossible to sleep.
So I squatted in the cage, my knees trembling.

Of course the face is real
of course it isn’t a private fantasy
we see it as clearly as you do

Where the gale winds blew they crouched low
where too much horizon leered they fashioned a circle
and drew its boundaries tight

When we take the downhill runs into account,
the world of avalanche and thaw, the shifts
in altitude, patterns that trace them down

You can only have a lot of power,
never enough: