for John Milton

Their theaters cackle and bray, their carriages
clutter the streets: cockades, torches, liveries
clash. Philistine hearts
jocund and sublime, they smear their deals

gold on columns and cornices. Temples fume
with burning fat. The choicest girls
parade with kohl-ringed eyes and spangled thighs.
Let the poor creep into shadows: they offend.

We could almost see her
said to have risen in the bay
from sea foam and the blood of Ouranos' sliced genitals

It's not as simple as rhyming “mud” and “blood”
   as Owen did and does (“I, too, saw God through mud”)
   in his “Apologia.”

Living his last days in a filthy, crowded, freezing prison cell, Max Jacob exercised his famous gifts. Perhaps they had never been so useful.

In the summer of 1935, the young Elizabeth Bishop, only recently graduated from Vassar College, set out on one of her many voyages. This was a trip to France. After a homesick crossing by ship, she spent a month in the small port of Douarnenez, on the western tip of Brittany, while waiting for her friend Louise Crane.