TPCASTT

Wasted, wasted minutes that couldn't be worse, minutes of a barbaric condescension. --Stare out the bathroom window at the fir-trees, at their dark needles, accretions to no purpose woodenly crystallized, and where two fireflies are only lost. Hear nothing but a train that goes by, must go by, like tension; nothing. And wait: maybe even now these minutes' host emerges, some relaxed uncondescending stranger, the heart's release. And while the fireflies are failing to illuminate these nightmare trees might they not be his green gay eyes.
 * While Someone Telephones**[[image:TELEPHONE.PNG width="693" height="496" align="left"]]

We must admire her perfect aim, this huntress of the winter air whose level weapon needs no sight, if it were not that everywhere her game is sure, her shot is right. The least of us could do the same.
 * The Colder The Air**[[image:haydenproject/COLDERAIR.PNG width="692" height="458" align="right"]]

The chalky birds or boats stand still, reducing her conditions of chance; air's gallery marks identically the narrow gallery of her glance. The target-center in her eye is equally her aim and will.

Time's in her pocket, ticking loud on one stalled second. She'll consult not time nor circumstance. She calls on atmosphere for her result. (It is this clock that later falls in wheels and chimes of leaf and cloud.)

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
 * The Map**

Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges

showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges

where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.

Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,

drawing it unperturbed around itself?

Along the fine tan sandy shelf

is the land tugging at the sea from under?

The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.

Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo

has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,

under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,

or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.

The names of seashore towns run out to sea,

the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains

-the printer here experiencing the same excitement

as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.

These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger

like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is,

lending the land their waves' own conformation:

and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,

profiles investigate the sea, where land is.

Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?

-What suits the character or the native waters best.

Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.

More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

It is so peaceful on the ceiling! It is the Place de la Concorde. The little crystal chandelier is off, the fountain is in the dark. Not a soul is in the park.
 * Sleeping on the Ceiling**[[image:SLEEPING.PNG width="689" height="433" align="right"]]

Below, where the wallpaper is peeling, the Jardin des Plantes has locked its gates. Those photographs are animals. The mighty flowers and foliage rustle; under the leaves the insects tunnel.

We must go under the wallpaper to meet the insect-gladiator, to battle with a net and trident, and leave the fountain and the square But oh, that we could sleep up there...

It is marvellous to wake up together At the same minute; marvellous to hear The rain begin suddenly all over the roof, To feel the air suddenly clear As if electricity had passed through it From a black mesh of wires in the sky. All over the roof the rain hisses, And below, the light falling of kisses.
 * Intimate, Low-Voices, Delicate Things**[[image:DELICACY.PNG width="689" height="456" align="right"]]

An electrical storm is coming or moving away; It is the prickling air that wakes us up. If lighting struck the house now, it would run From the four blue china balls on top Down the roof and down the rods all around us, And we imagine dreamily How the whole house caught in a bird-cage of lightning Would be quite delightful rather than frightening;

And from the same simplified point of view Of night and lying flat on one's back All things might change equally easily, Since always to warn us there must be these black Electrical wires dangling. Without surprise The world might change to something quite different, As the air changes or the lightning comes without our blinking, Change as our kisses are changing without our thinking.

On the unbreathing sides of hills they play, a specklike girl and boy, alone, but near a specklike house. The Sun's suspended eye blinks casually, and then they wade gigantic waves of light and shade. A dancing yellow spot, a pup, attends them. Clouds are piling up;
 * Squatter's Children**[[image:SQUATTER.PNG width="691" height="472" align="right"]]

a storm piles up behind the house. The children play at digging holes. The ground is hard; they try to use one of their father's tools, a mattock with a broken haft the two of them can scarcely lift. It drops and clangs. Their laughter spreads effulgence in the thunderheads,

Weak flashes of inquiry direct as is the puppy's bark. But to their little, soluble, unwarrantable ark, apparently the rain's reply consists of echolalia, and Mother's voice, ugly as sin, keeps calling to them to come in.

Children, the threshold of the storm has slid beneath your muddy shoes; wet and beguiled, you stand among the mansions you may choose out of a bigger house than yours, whose lawfulness endures. It's soggy documents retain your rights in rooms of falling rain.

This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as angels, flying high as they want and as far as they want sidewise in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections; the whole region, from the highest heron down to the weightless mangrove island with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings like illumination in silver, and down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots and the beautiful pea-green back-pasture where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wildflower in an ornamental spray of spray; this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope: it does look like heaven. But a skeletal lighthouse standing there in black and white clerical dress, who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better. He thinks that hell rages below his iron feet, that that is why the shallow water is so warm, and he knows that heaven is not like this. Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare and when it gets dark he will remember something strongly worded to say on the subject.
 * Seascape**[[image:SEASCAPE.PNG width="693" height="518" align="right"]]

Days that cannot bring you near or will not, Distance trying to appear something more obstinate, argue argue argue with me endlessly neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.
 * Argument**[[image:ARGUMENT.PNG width="692" height="463" align="right"]]

Distance: Remember all that land beneath the plane; that coastline of dim beaches deep in sand stretching indistinguishably all the way, all the way to where my reasons end?

Days: And think of all those cluttered instruments, one to a fact, canceling each other's experience; how they were like some hideous calendar "Compliments of Never & Forever, Inc."

The intimidating sound of these voices we must separately find can and shall be vanquished: Days and Distance disarrayed again and gone...

The tumult in the heart keeps asking questions. And then it stops and undertakes to answer in the same tone of voice. No one could tell the difference.
 * Conversation**[[image:CONVO.PNG width="693" height="432" align="right"]]

Uninnocent, these conversations start, and then engage the senses, only half-meaning to. And then there is no choice, and then there is no sense;

until a name and all its connotation are the same.

The moon in the bureau mirror looks out a million miles (and perhaps with pride, at herself, but she never, never smiles) far and away beyond sleep, or perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
 * Insomnia**[[image:INSOMNIA.PNG width="692" height="529" align="right"]]

By the Universe deserted, she'd tell it to go to hell, and she'd find a body of water, or a mirror, on which to dwell. So wrap up care in a cobweb and drop it down the well

into that world inverted where left is always right, where the shadows are really the body, where we stay awake all night, where the heavens are shallow as the sea is now deep, and you love me.