“The History TeacherTrying to protect his students' innocencehe told them the Ice Age was really justthe Chilly Age, a period of a million yearswhen everyone had to wear sweaters.And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,named after the long driveways of the time.The Spanish Inquisition was nothing morethan an outbreak of questions such as"How far is it from here to Madrid?""What do you call the matador's hat?"The War of the Roses took place in a garden,and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.The children would leave his classroomfor the playground to torment the weakand the smart,mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,while he gathered up his notes and walked homepast flower beds and white picket fences,wondering if they would believe that soldiersin the Boer War told long, rambling storiesdesigned to make the enemy nod off.”

“The Death of Allegory I am wondering what became of all those tall abstractions that used to pose, robed and statuesque, in paintings and parade about on the pages of the Renaissance displaying their capital letters like license plates. Truth cantering on a powerful horse, Chastity, eyes downcast, fluttering with veils. Each one was marble come to life, a thought in a coat, Courtesy bowing with one hand always extended, Villainy sharpening an instrument behind a wall, Reason with her crown and Constancy alert behind a helm. They are all retired now, consigned to a Florida for tropes. Justice is there standing by an open refrigerator. Valor lies in bed listening to the rain. Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood, and all their props are locked away in a warehouse, hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles. Even if you called them back, there are no places left for them to go, no Garden of Mirth or Bower of Bliss. The Valley of Forgiveness is lined with condominiums and chain saws are howling in the Forest of Despair. Here on the table near the window is a vase of peonies and next to it black binoculars and a money clip, exactly the kind of thing we now prefer, objects that sit quietly on a line in lower case, themselves and nothing more, a wheelbarrow, an empty mailbox, a razor blade resting in a glass ashtray. As for the others, the great ideas on horseback and the long-haired virtues in embroidered gowns, it looks as though they have traveled down that road you see on the final page of storybooks, the one that winds up a green hillside and disappears into an unseen valley where everyone must be fast asleep.”

“Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slideor press an ear against its hive.I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch.I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author's name on the shore.But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means.”

“Picnic, LightningIt is possible to be struck by a meteoror a single-engine planewhile reading in a chair at home.Safes drop from rooftopsand flatten the odd pedestrianmostly within the panels of the comics,but still, we know it is possible,as well as the flash of summer lightning,the thermos toppling over,spilling out on the grass.And we know the messagecan be delivered from within.The heart, no valentine,decides to quit after lunch,the power shut off like a switch,or a tiny dark ship is unmooredinto the flow of the body’s rivers,the brain a monastery,defenseless on the shore.This is what I think aboutwhen I shovel compostinto a wheelbarrow,and when I fill the long flower boxes,then press into rowsthe limp roots of red impatiens—the instant hand of Deathalways ready to burst forthfrom the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.Then the soil is full of marvels,bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,red-brown pine needles, a beetle quickto burrow back under the loam.Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue,the clouds a brighter white,and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edgeagainst a round stone,the small plants singingwith lifted faces, and the clickof the sundialas one hour sweeps into the next.”

“GraveWhat do you think of my new glassesI asked as I stood under a shade treebefore the joined grave of my parents,and what followed was a long silencethat descended on the rows of the dead and on the fields and the woods beyond, one of the one hundred kinds of silenceaccording to the Chinese belief,each one distinct from the others,but the differences being so faintthat only a few special monks were able to tell them apart.They make you look very scholarly,I heard my mother sayonce I lay down on the groundand pressed an ear into the soft grass.Then I rolled over and pressed my other ear to the ground,the ear my father likes to speak into,but he would say nothing,and I could not find a silenceamong the 100 Chinese silencesthat would fit the one that he createdeven though I was the onewho had just made up the businessof the 100 Chinese silences - the Silence of the Night Boatand the Silence of the Lotus,cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bellonly deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.”

“…(my father) would say nothing,And I could not find a silenceAmong the one hundred Chinese silencesThat would fit the one he createdEven though I was the one Who had just made up the businessOf the one hundred Chinese silences-The Silence of the Night Boat. And the Silence of the Lotus, Cousin to the Silence of the Temple BellOnly deeper and softer…”

“I could feel the day offering itself to me,and I wanted nothing morethan to be in the moment-but which moment?Not that one, or that one, or that one,”