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  was to kiss me on the lips.

  There was no refusing his anointing me

  with what I was meant to bear of him

  from where he was, present in the world,

  a document loose from the archives

  of form—not spectral, not corporeal—

  in transit, though not between lives or bodies:

  those lips on mine, then mine on yours.

  THE NEXT NIGHT

  I found my way back

  by grief scent and smoke

  to the daughter's voice

  from the father's mouth.

  This time you asked

  that I step outside my body,

  though not far enough to fall

  into the abyss of night

  or near the flames

  that ringed the bed.

  I couldn't say "Go away,"

  because the dead can hear,

  and they, as you remind, float

  above us, not everywhere,

  but here and there, following

  their own preoccupations.

  Besides, I loved your skirt

  of burning tongues,

  the sleeveless blouse that fit you

  as it fit the armless mannequins.

  I loved all the shibboleths

  for torture, all the archaic

  pleading that made you

  smother what I tried to say

  by saying,"Come with me,

  inhabit the inch of air

  between our forms and their

  vaporous happenstance."

  But no one talks like that,

  not even the dead when they speak

  through you, though

  it's what I heard floating in the spaces.

  It's what fed the flames

  of your command

  that all of me resisted

  even as I followed.

  Notes

  "The Watch." Dedicated to the memory of Dennis Casey.

  "Bird Crashing into Window." A phrase from line 123 of Lycidas is incorporated into line 18. Dedicated to the memory ofAgha Shahid Ali.

  "The Messenger." Lines 1136–1230 of Euripides' Medea.

  "A Line from Robert Desnos Used to Commemorate George 'Sonny' Took-the-Shield, Fort Belknap, Montana." George Took-the-Shield was fifty-three when he died of cancer. He was an Assiniboin who was instrumental in repatriating his ancestors' remains held by the Smithsonian Institution. He was an artist, writer, and poet.

  "Biggar, Scotland, September 1976." Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve, Scotland's greatest poet of the twentieth century. His masterpiece is the 2,685-line A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926).

  "Invocation to the Heart." Pig ventricular valves and nylon are materials used to repair the human heart.

  "Shelley's Guitar." Shelley's Guitar: A Bicentenary Exhibition of Manuscripts, First Editions and Relics of Percy Bysshe Shelley was sponsored by the Bodleian Library, 1992. The lines quoted in the poem are from "With a guitar. To Jane," which Shelley wrote for Jane Williams.

  "Bardo." Dedicated to the memory of Ben Branch.

  Acknowledgments

  GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT to the editors of the publications where the following poems first appeared: Agni Review, "Spelunker,""Invocation to the Heart." Alaska Quarterly Review, "Boat Rental." Atlantic Monthly, "Bardo." Bellevue Review, "How Snow Arrives." Blue Mesa Review, "A Night at the Window." Georgia Review, "To a Chameleon," "Summer Anniversary," "Twenty-first Century." Grove Rerview, "Aubade," "How Did I Get Inside?," "Medea's Oldest Son," "Night Story," "The Watch." Gulf Coast, "Elegy for a Long-Dead Friend." Kenyon Review, "Snow Day," "The Missing Mountain," "Confessional," "Bird Crashing into Window," "Lost Horizon." The Nation, "In May." Ploughshares, "The Next Night," "Their Weight," "Mine Own John Clare," "Birds Appearing in a Dream," "A Line from Robert Desnos Used to Commemorate George 'Sonny' Took-the-Shield, Fort Belknap, Montana." Rivendell, "A Winter Feeding." Slate, "Shelley's Guitar," "The Lift." Sonora Review, "Bougainvillea," "Out of Whole Cloth Made." TriQuarterly, "Common Flicker," "Turkey Vultures."

  I wish to thank the University of Maryland for a creative and performing

  arts summer grant, which contributed to the completion of this book,

  and Middlebury College for its ongoing support.

  My gratitude, thanks, and affection go to Liz Arnold, Daniel Hall, Edward Hirsch, Jim Longenbach, Tom Mallon, John Murphy, Howard Norman, Steve Orlen, Stanley Plumly, Buzz Poverman, Michael Ryan, Alan Shapiro, Tom Sleigh, Elizabeth Spires, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Josh Weiner, and Dean Young.

  In memory: Agha Shahid Ali, Ben Branch, Dennis Casey, Amanda Davis, Roland Flint,William and Emily Maxwell, and George Took-the-Shield.

  And with love to David and Robert.

  About The Author

  MICHAEL COLLIER is the director of the Bread Loaf

  Writers' Conference and teaches English at the

  University of Maryland, College Park. He has published

  four previous collections of poetry, most recently

  The Ledge, a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times

  Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

  Collier is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship,

  NEA fellowships, and the Discovery/The Nation Award,

  among other honors, and is a former poet laureate

  of Maryland. He lives in Maryland.