My fingers in yours,
walking so stately.
Cut cloud pours?
My fingers in yours.
Thunderhead roars?
I smile sedately,
my fingers in yours,
walking so stately.

The statues are eyeless in Iveagh,
ruins under leafed eaves,

effaced, pitted, blotted,
benighted green and wet:

they have heard far more love
than mine and hers, witnessed

others filled with beer, wine,
& whiskey. Forbidden fruit

rots on the branch. Magpies gather
by blue knees, curious and hopeful.

Crimes of the heart were committed
on that night. The sound of the river

sinewed through the cracked window.
The past was father of the present,

the sheets were stained sails.
Coffee was brewing in the evening,

corks rolled into corners,
whiskey emptied the memory.

Now it's years, years later:
I just walked on water,

the river would not collapse beneath me.
A friend sent me neon letters,

rain is due tomorrow,
and the kittens are restless.

I open a bottle. My lovely neighbor
is building a mirror before dinner,

she borrows a screwdriver.
I am guilty of everything you said.

I am guilty: but there is no jury
who would ever convict.

You were a smeary bruise,
your eye hysterical,
cut from white twill
in the brumal March;
I slipped my blues,
to a blonde chorale
in your room, on the hill
gushing with larch.
We practiced slow,
while black cones bled
coffee. Your breath
came in little throws,
your heart in parcels of red,
that led to our little death.

A child's recipe:
two crossed sticks
and yarn
to bind them
hung in the window
to watch
indolently
our blind dreams.

I couldn't have
guessed I would
keep making these,
not with yarn
but barbed wire.
Not with twigs
but bones.
No dreams
but ghosts
that pile up
like snow drifts
against the window.

Oma watching
television downstairs,
while blue room sheets
squared back in peels,
& honeysuckle's ladder
up the brickwork
reached like spring fingers
towards my window,
where in brown shadows
I saw foxes steal over
the crumbling drive,
& clouds crashed trees
atop deer eating lawn
where uncle's autos coruscated
in the tall wilds.
In that bed I came of age
with thoughts of women naked -
New candles ached
and led the way deeper
as they dripped
all across my adolescence.
Years bloomed inside me,
stones fell from the sky,
hard as ***; fox bones
slept in the wood,
the televisions all sat,
idols on the lace,
flickering presses
that touched every wall.
The moon a wet thigh -
something sang,
& burrowed beneath the pillow.

Let's get it out of the way:
The solstice tomorrow
gathers shadows
in the blond alley,
building a translucency
until a black flood
of night shapes
soaks across the walk,
empty since it's a ghost town
this close to Christmas,
and metro is empty
but for us lovely few
who need the paycheck,
and this winter is too warm,
it's unsettling,
and a little grinding sleet
wouldn't be unwelcome.

I find myself
with a date tomorrow,
despite convincing myself
that I should really be alone.
I always choose this
immediate connection
and that has to change.
I can't follow the flaking flame
into another courtroom,
I can't dive into another
sly, wild eye that I box up
and store away for when
it's all come down,
and I'm too alone by half.

White roses hook sleeves
in a hot rain park
as we hurry to leave
a new fringing dark
of clouded eaves.
I drink mezcal, you sip
soft wine, we kiss
at the bar as storms slip
through streeted air
with a springing hiss.
Lightning lashes bare
angles of pink night.
We lean close, share
Sunday's appetite.

Night glass
full of froth,
the one-arm
scissor's voice,
a balestra
of cold idea,
a zugzwang
where I must
speak, I must,
but every word
will haunt me,
like the faces
of vapor that rise
at dawn from
the lawn.

The stars are
dying up there,
as the brute
sun rises again
& they fade
to zero
in the blue.  
I have such
terrible flurries
of thought
at night,
everything is
crushing, but
inevitably the black
gives way to indigo,
then a delicate purple,
then to bright cobalt.
Things are better
under the opening
sun and its
tanning wing.

The devil sits
beside me,
feeding me his
melting whispers
dense as biscuits
full as the head
of the tree.
I can only banish
him back to his
bottle with the
piano, writing
songs in D minor,
letting the paint
listen as the hands
are moving,
weaving spells.

Finally, order
in my mind -
these doubts
will pass from history -
evanescence.
Other worries fall
like rippling castles.
I wake up too early
but there you are.
Things seem ok
in the deep deep
blue of morning,
stars hanging dead
in the sky as the
carving sun toasts
away the dew,
and doubts fade
back to zero.

A black ****** slips stars
into the withered
low-tide triangle
at Sandymount -
     Where are you?

My clenched chest beats bruises
into a defaced molt of moon
& down the quay, pursuing you,
before acceding to reality:
     You are missing.

You were
long asleep
when I was
walking into
the beer garden.

I drank long
and deep
from a plastic
cup. The highest
alcohol content
I could find.
My blood was
a choir -
hallelujah.

I thought
of you
constantly.
My blood was
a mountain.
My blood was
a red crescent,
a ruby falling.

You sober up
with a mix of
alkaseltzer
& bread.
I don't make
any efforts,
letting the
blood drift
away on its
own accord.

I'm on your
page. Fifteen
year plans
& we want
the same
things. My
blood is
singing to
you, aria
after aria.

Sons and
daughters
of my future
walk beside me -
simulacra in a
dreaming sun.

Please, tell me
their names.
Tell me if they
had my coffee
eyes. If they
had your
sweet voice.
Tell me what
you remember -
this reverie
is yours, too -

I fasten my
dreams to you
with the soft
strings of
my marrow.

I can feel the vacancy
you leave when you are far,
and a melancholy's taken me.

This autumn core has wakened me,
but the sun's removed from sky,
I feel the vacancy.

Other couples drift complacently,
in and out of bars,
and a melancholy's taken me.

The joy of the new art's forsaken me.
I hardly know what we are,
but I feel the vacancy.

I cross K street mistakenly,
distracted by a reminiscent car,
and a melancholy's taken me.

We flower in this latency,
this "attend et regarde."
I feel the vacancy,
and a melancholy's taken me.

Across the initialed table,
thin-limbed within
a pink NKOTB sweatshirt,
flicking pencils at my lap,
nest of blonde hair glowing
under the humming ballasts
of the lance-long bulbs,
she still perches, smirking slyly.

I can't shake her.
She is installed somewhere
I can't reach. I remember
all my childhood crushes,
but only this one is so vivid.

She invited me to her birthday,
at her house, knowing I liked her.
She fawned over a boy
from a different school.
Every poem I've written
about her names him: Adam.
I cried in her yard, bundled inward,
went quiet, waited for my mother.
On the ride home I stared
as the green fields striped by.

She grew up, married,
started a family. I kept track
only through hearsay.
When she died in childbirth,
I surprised myself by crying.

The oak died
in the last

baseball year,
thick dollars of rot

splitting the crook
with a winter step.

I had given up
on Kelly from

Corner Drive,
old enough now

to let go of
the desire in

her Lions
nightshirt.

**** moved in
next door, saving

me from
mother's cancer.

The sun was a
gnaw, I lived by

nightfall, engaged
to the femoral

moon. ****
played drums,

his father
chain smoked, and

I hunted the changing
braid that filled

the wooden air.
It was another way

to be, exile from
the sick-house,

eating the words
of books,

replacing
the things I had

been denied.
The sick oak lay

like a vacancy
in the center of the

yard, too far gone
even for firewood,

black ailerons
down in the wetness

of the mantle.
Lord,

I could barely
even look at it.

Join me, in this tumbledown
brick palazzo ruled by the bones
of a queen singing and swearing
that we'll never walk alone.

We can read in the oak pocket,
order ale from the cellars,
watch as the hanged man
steams with oily nostalgia,

well-waxed stories blossoming
& shrugging from his trolley tongue,
tales of silver-roaded loves he's had,
back in a lawless youth.

Love is a game you can't win,
insists the hanged man,
but if you're oh so careful
you can lose very slowly.

I talk to myself
as the night arrives
in little caskets
slipping over
yellow rooftops.
Winter slithers
& rattles back
under the doors,
while spring slews in
on orange cloud.
I say your name
& a luster throbs
across the walls.
Late hours are
breach born,
full of bent bays
of lamp light,
I plead into the ceiling
until I fill
with sharp shapes
draped raw,
& my little speeches
perish in gloves of air.
Out of the window,
black ribbons streak
the riverbank face
to the moon etchings.
High tides blot me:
I still feel as I did
when I met you.
You're a heart shaker,
you wrest the lid
from the world,
your joy fills
my naked mouth.
But something
has gone wrong,
hasn't it?
Disordered,
melancholy -
you, too, see
the night-caskets,
don't you?  
Dublin facades
vanish beneath
rain scissor arms.
But it needn't be so -
come and lean on me.
I will remind you
that spring is come
with green armies
of blithe devotion,
trees flick
with leaf,
& you are loved.
I know you don't even
like me to call you babe,
not anymore, but
I'll live with that -
I'll tell the floorboards,
the starlings and magpies,
the unsealed horizontals
that report at dawn:
it will be alright,
it will be alright.

These words are
    your soldiers.
These poems are
    your armies.

Let them march
    to the drum of joy.
Let them march
    to the fife of sorrow.

They will always obey
    their general.

My therapist is pregnant,
the same therapist I once appraised
while I sat clinically depressed
on her clean gray couch,
my burnt umber eyes scanning
inappropriately.

As I imagined her
with hand of wine
in a brick wall restaurant,
I justified myself saying
that everyone does this,
looked at their counselor
and imagined closing
that very fragile gap.

But my fantasy was brief,
broken horribly by the things
I had to say about myself.
And now her soft, wide belly
stings accusingly even
as I give my sincere
congratulations.

No wife, no family,
no children here,
just more lithium,
another year down,
another breakup,
and another "fresh start."
Another notch on the mind's cell wall.

Your hair is rich and dark,
but it's a mess, a bird's nest,
maybe a bit oily.
But as you boldly affirm,
you don't need tidiness,
or even beauty.
You fail to object when I throw
your little poem
to the floor on my way
to your body.

My heart's exploding
like a thundercloud -
No, my heart's eroding,

my tongue corroding,
iron-bound, rain-ploughed,
no heart's exploding.
  
But the moon's unloading
a tide that's pain-proud,
& I feel my heart's eroding.

I hear it all, try decoding
her art. Play it loud -
until my heart's exploding.

Yet something's foreboding,
these sheets are shrouds -
under them, my heart's eroding.

Her eyes are goading
until I've vowed
to her my heart's exploding -
But my heart's eroding.

Your
voice
combs
the
blue
of my
blood -

you're
so deep
I hear
you
even
above
the
knocking
gray
of work.

Your
voice
flares
in me,
a beacon
to
something
that
swallowed
400
blazing,
aching
pages,
& still
is
ravenous.

The wind
finds a tongue
in the hazel
below the
flaking air.

At seventeen
I was in
a Pontiac
at two in
the morning
& I saw it
moving
in a coat
of leaves,
awake
& sentinel.

It uses
elms
to sigh
east
& chimes
pinned to
the brick
by an old
plum nail
drip sprinkles
of its music
into the
amber eve.

With
mouthless
whisper,
it tells me
that spring
is here and
the long
acres
between us
are just
the wild
playing fields
of fireflies.

See-saw thunder dives in the eaves,
whipping rain snaps and jaws,
lightning wrinkles the pale cheek
of the sub-city in the distance:
lit windows are yellowed eyes
in a ashen face dotting the fat flat edifice
across the road. Steam-oars extend
from a pinnace-cloud that races
across the flooded jowls of the evening.
I offer these things to you, sweet reader,
because she is not here. Join me
in this storm as it evaporates upward
into the strange and blankly lidded salt of moon.

Poetry is seeking the answer
Joy is in knowing the answer
Death is knowing the answer
-Gregory Corso


"Fall is here." She yawns
under ruptured sun & brief,
timid cloud; helm of elm leaf
stung to beaten bronze
and sleeves of copper - the bill
of age is paid in change of gold.
The slacking breeze slugs to cold,
slumping toward the thinning rill
whose runny fingers read my palm.
She walks into an afternoon;
I lay in morning's greening dune,
writing a city's sonnet-psalm.
In this bower hours are years,
years are lives, and lives veneers.

Des champs de caramel dans vos yeux
la vapeur de la beauté tout autour de vous.
Le foulard de nuit vous enveloppe,
les manches du jour sur le sol.
Ville froide, ville chaude
ville du cœur
vous êtes un citoyen universel.
Je suis votre cartographe,
votre biographe,
votre poète de nuit.
Je présente votre chanson au piano.
Femme caramel
quand ton cœur s’ouvre
c’est moi qui suis là
avec une bouteille de vin
et un cierge.


"Caramel fields in your eyes
the steam of beauty all around you.
The night scarf envelops you,
the sleeves of the day on the ground.
Cold city, hot city
city of the heart
you are a universal citizen.
I am your cartographer,
your biographer,
your poet of the night.
I present your song to the piano.
Caramel woman
when your heart opens
it's me who stands
with a bottle of wine
& a candle."

Andrei,

I was a child
when I read
a piece of paper
& you died.

You were a telegram
falling from the air,
a moth, a stray dog,
a liner note passing
through my hands.

I pressed play
& Chopin unwound
like a serpent,
the mood shifting
like the rainbow
that feeds on oil's skin.

I went out
& found more.
Rachmaninov attacked,
a chess game
where the pieces moved
ten at a time.

& the Prokofiev,
followed me
around the house.

I was a child
when I saved you
with my ears.
Let me save you again.

Come, revenge
yourself a little while
in my old records.

Whisky bottle's a wishing well,
but wishes aren't free;
whisky bottle's a wishing well,
but wishes aren't free;
when I drink from the bottle
the bottle drinks from me.

I drink down to the bottom,
there's nowhere else to go;
I drink down to the bottom,
there's nowhere else to go;
I know there's no way to win
but I can try losing slow.

Whisky bottle's a wishing well,
but wishes aren't free;
whisky bottle's a wishing well,
but wishes aren't free;
when I drink from the bottle
the bottle drinks from me.

The grass is sage and fawn
where the flaxen lipstick
ruckles through the brick
to neck the lawn:
I love you most.
Here by this chimney is a dried
crepuscule where the sun died,
as we made our champagne toast,
then took the southern stairs
to launch the ******* dark,
& leave kisses like postmarks
in little blooded pairs.
There is no second place
to your coup de grace.

What is this church
we've made for ourselves,
with elm-groved nave,
& grass-paved aisle?

What religion
did we raise here,
with insect hymns
of a spotted choir?

What gods did we move
under the maple,
tongues rolling,
chatting with lightning?

Rainwater buttress,
twilight altar, homily -
we built this green chapel
in the ribs of the vale

and practiced our love
in a pink-stained light,
where we were crying
out for one another.

I hear it's going to snow tonight,
& untamed words run through my skin,
but I don't think I'll write -

snow may smear to tussled white,
but we're such fools for indoor sins
that if it's going to snow tonight

we'll stay in, turn low the light
until the walls are dim and thin...
I don't think I'll write

or hew you little metered sleights
of hand, more smoke than djinn -
No, if it's going to snow tonight,

sun sluiced away in spite,
sky low and gray and blank as tin,
then I don't think I'll write:

these crawling words are feeling trite
& the bedsheets gather in a grin.  
It's going to snow tonight,
but I don't think I'll write.

Clouded ****,
nail's slow sink,
stone blood rink,
corrected lines.
Brunette sway,
ensorcelled flock
of locks, half-blocks
great hazel bay.
Humid bone,
inky throne,
column's silk,
buttermilk,
scarlet lip,
laugh's skip.

There will be a totem -
maybe castles are green
in gavottes of sun,
or a sly, sleek-angled bus
by a sky-headed smoker
will make its play.

Yes, we're in a play
about these totems,
where exiled smokers
in a delirious green
catch the last bus
to the sun.

But that diva sun
refuses to play,
& eats the bus.
Ain't that a totem?
We'll always be green,
always casual smokers,

(or is it social smokers?)
flicking ash at that sun,
which is evening green.
In the museum we'll play
among the totems,
catch a line of buses,

& then another bus,
almond exhaust smoke,
until we view the totem -
a saddle on the sun,
a silence in our play,
a voluptuous green.

The same green's
splashed on the bus.
Maybe the best play
for a casual smoker
is to eat the sun,
eat the totem,

then eat the green.
Take the express bus
to another play.

You know me by now...
I catch you
with messy hair
under the new face
of night, smiling
miles into the workings
of my eyes,
& I'm all undone.

You're lip smoking
as we walk canal south,
the whited angles
of swan wings
tenting the water
beside your laughter.

You know me by now...
your fleet kiss is blown
across a blue broadness
that could never stop it,
never,
          never.

I arrived at six for an early start,
only to find that a cloud had coughed,

spat, or birthed a fog onto the lawn,
midwifed by polearms of corn

under silver doctor's eyes
of cooling car. Beer tabs snicked

away as a giant cheerful beast
slouched and stalked us

with candy heart and whetted tooth,
snapping at pipe smoke enemies,

patrolling our hands with hope.
Lives roll along, we all find:

men and women having a hard go
of it in hornet houses, or exes

who tent us with doubt even now.
The fog has burned away and the lawless

calligraphy of insects weaves and wreathes
the rising air into which exits are engraved.

Time enough to slide the highways
back into the busy hours

of porcelain hearts - easily chipped
but good enough still for daily use.

Look at this Moor,
with his dolphin
held like a bagpipe
splitting with water,

while beside him
tourists stack three deep
grabbing at their beer,
pretending to ponder

the veiled Nile,
while their eyes slant
towards the open seats
at the cafe and the Aperol

that issues so freely
you'd think Neptune
was pouring it out, too.
The sun is wincing citrus

above the high windows
that overlook the plaza,
laughter cresting above
the tourist scrum, and

children scream with gelato
strung between their fingers.
People like to be close
to history, but not too close.

If the old stones spit water
pleasantly, so much the better.
Browse the pamphlet,
tell the wife it's Bernini,

not knowing that Bernini
once paid a servant
to take a razor to the face
of his mistress because

she slept with his brother,
because history's scrawled
as much in blood as in marble,
and the colossal Pantheons

of the world are easier
understood with a dizzy
laugh and eyes shining
with afternoon wine.

Up on the deck
the pink cascade
of evening stumbled
against a blue stop.
Stars seemed fine
as powder.
The moon was golden,
a Brasher doubloon
nailed to the felted smear
of milky way.
          Night knelt
          into the red bowl
          of Autumn;
          Summer died slowly,
          cloaked all in yellow,
          behind your shoulder.
Fights on the street
scattered under the
water head. Brains
hissed with poetry
as rain dwindled.
We heaped stones
on the truth.
We knew it wouldn't
last like that.
          Night knelt
          into the red bowl
          of Autumn;
          Summer died slowly,
          cloaked all in yellow,
          behind your shoulder.
The world without you
keeps breaking down:
the morning motorcycle
won't stop idling, I can't
cut books from their shelf,
food is an accusation.
Stars abrade, the moon
is sold for scrap.
Where are you?

Your words
open
in the quick
hours,

& the long
distance
feels like
a sway.

Here, evening
is installed
with blue
pieces:

blue tree,
blue cloud,
blue angle
of sky,

flat as a card.
The moon
is just some
flour,

flicked
into place.
The miles
step away

& I taste
your sweet
honesty
& want more.

Easing into leaf:
Chrysanthemums opening,
Each one just for you.

You are somewhere between
the track of my gaze and
Dublin's last days,
long with summer
& brittle breeze,
& fickle cloud
that denies a sun.

You are something between
a Daydream Delusion
& the poems I write that
speak your name with
every vocabulary.
"Limousine eyelash."
You are still here, and
you always will be.

The same Madonnas,
the same pitying faces,
the same arched necks
of the same saints...

Clear it all
for a new palette.
Stone over pine blaze,
fringed gentian blot.
Broken-columned sun,
splayed in glade sand.
Drift water stroke.

Rescind
the School of Athens,
the Madonnas,
the arched necks.

What can they say
about lilies plunged
in the moon's syrup?

"Wine is the mirror of the mind."

The cut glass
fluorescence
of sloe gin and *****,
cuffed to my wrist,
scours the tabletop
with self-cruel smiles.

In the convex glass
I'm wearing
a robe of pills.
In the convex glass
my hand's curve
strangles a joy
back down to size
with forced sleep.

Dizzy on the bird's
chop-wing of couch,
half-tapped glasses
lose the day to the
little white discs
laboring to lift me
roughly into the spaces
between the stars.

The octagonal glass
is so empty.

There
is a
rain here
that
hangs
like
threadbare
silk
from the
cloud,
never
falling.

Birds
chop the
morning
with
their
small
flight.

They
gather
on the
church
before
shattering
the quiet
with a
clatter
of wing.

I stitch
these
things
I see
to mend
you.

This
morning
you
sent
me Yeats
so I
send him
back:

"So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest."

Angry-headed poppy,
come deliver your sleep.
I want the black dream
that comes at 3 am,
& leaves only when
the numbers rake across
the face of glass.
O ****** poppy,
bring me the blankness
of your dry child -
my beloved slips
into scarlet wine,
she opens to wavering night,
without even my hand.
I down myself with coffee,
then wake with poems
erupting like lilacs
over a new grave.
Sweet-headed poppy,
come distribute your sleep.
I need the black dream
that comes so late
that it blinds me
to the ways I love her.

The
night
is so
painfully
blue
that
my
chest
becomes
a cave
of melody.

Cars
exchange
blue
places
like chess
pieces
castling.

The moon
hears the
blue
dreams
of you
that
string
from my
fingers,
& bursts
with
desire.

I watch
planes
crisscross
the tube
of indigo,
but I
don't
care -

you aren't
on one
of them,
yet.

The sun is loathe to rise.
Beige, bored,
morning crutches
to some kind of
vertical birth.
Your rain plinth
glissandos don't
quite make it here;
I get cerulean void.
When the sun
finally coughs up
a gray beam
over the bellies
of tenements,
I've moved on,
to the seethe
of your notice.

Intent is always blotted
by leaking speech:

words stray from their purpose
like star-bellied clouds

that stumble and fall
into a coffee cup,

burning with morning:
a wet mirror face.

The gutters murmur
with yellow leaf heads,

a branch escapes
from the wood (unwillingly?)

& the morning vaults
over the white creek.

I'm here, I'm here,
the rain is saying -

it stalks me home
after the concert.

I hear the
fan blades

churning the
darkness,

& the minutes
seep like cough

medicine into
the floorboards.

Sleep is so thin
tonight, wasp-

waisted and
easily broken,

rising just
above me in

the black dell
of the room.

Beside me is
the flatness

of the fabric
where she'll

soon be, to
model the

sweetness of
night's middle.

But until then
I drift in

& out of the
dream where

I'm losing teeth,
my slow heart

pushing words
around the room,

thinking about money,
weighing my soul

against a feather,
using her pillow,

rustling against
that flatness

& inhaling
the vacancy,

listening to the
fan blades

churning the
darkness.

Creeping phlox blossoms, star-blanched,
crawl gently in choir in the thunder yard,
like soft fare for the silver river fee.

Linen immortelle, shadow-bleared,
knotted aegis against a raw, wracking world:
smeary cloth-stalks lengthen duskily.

Rain-pinked palm, sloe-blotched:
tawny token of revival from those
who idle beneath rude thunderheads.

In the Paris giftshop
the one deep wing
of the vermilion angel
lanced the outer dark.

Outside,
draping olive lines
scattered and resolved
abstractly as trees.

The world was
filled with
incompleteness.

Back home,
with the second wife,
the night was fragrant
with barbeque,
nicotine,
& vetiver.

Having no direction,
I drifted into
the smoking rain.

Years later
there is an arrival
that thickens like glass,
a transparency,
a screen that flickers.

It's her, and
she's red-orange too.

An investment,
a face in gold leaf,
a pale labyrinth.

This time,
years later,
the deep wing
is a drifting veil,
and the olive line
connects us
like boardwalk string.

The glow of the glass
is a resolution.

The Winged Nike
of Samothrace
is installed inside me:
first the anxiety
of the reach,
straining for more.

Then the frozen music,
the perfect shape, even
with pieces missing.

Burnt sugar spangles
checker a green wall
the morning I'm on
an emergency call
with my former therapist,
who calls you my
major adult relationship,
& she is right.
Of course it hurts,
to lose that.
There's her, and then
there's everyone else,
& it doesn't feel close,
does it?
We're in a strange place.
I'd give anything I own
to board the next flight
from Dulles to Dublin
& nestle into the crook
of your arm over coffee
& almonds.
You put everything
you had into this one...
Instead I'm selling
this condo so full of you
that I can scarcely breathe,
moving back downtown
where the whitish blots
dip back and forth,
& waiting, waiting,
for something to change,
You just have to be patient
until she is ready
for one thing or the other.
& then it's noon,
& the call is over,
& the bobbin of sun
riffles back its little coins.
One thing, or the other.
Or the other.