The Next Move Is Always The Test.

Anything Can Happen Is Also, Incidentally, A Poem That Arose From Teaching. I'd Talked About The Horace Ode (i, 34) [on Which The Poem Is Based] In A Lecture I Gave At Harvard In The Fall Of 2000 Entitled Bright Boltsand Remembered It After The Twin Towers Attack.

If Self Is A Location, So Is Love.

The Dotted Line My Father's Ashplant Made On Sandymount Strand Is Something Else The Tide Won't Wash Away.

I Might Enjoy Being An Albatross, Being Able To Glide For Days And Daydream For Hundreds Of Miles Along The Thermals. And Then Being Able To Hang Like An Affliction Round Some People's Necks.

A Public Expectation, It Has To Be Said, Not Of Poetry As Such But Of Political Positions Variously Approvable By Mutually Disapproving Groups.