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

In the ninth grade I met a fantastic number of times
with Cookie Harris in the woods . . . Under the pretense
of going over our Algebra notes, given the pressure

The night was to the bowler
as pig is to the ham—

The apple-stars have gently dropped to earth
And settled in the trees, stars you can taste

Laid out in detail in the tree,
The soul glittering for a while in a green body

                The bishop named his turtle Tortuga.
An austere choice, but the bishop is austere:
he wears old stained trousers and lives in the dark

                So here I go in the famous Spanish slowness.
Clouds advance in their relentless armada—
(Thornton Wilder once said it takes a year 

                 A few months back, we went down to Huelva 
to clean our graveyard—condoms hung 
from the saplings shooting up from the dead: 

Because:

            a garter snake slid over my bare foot

We are happy walking on the dead,
sea breezes milling with the herbs ground down
on the hard pestle of the earth