Climb, claim your shelf-room, far Packed from inquisitive moon And cold contagious stars. Lean out, but look no longer, No further, than to stir

One day people will touch and talk… And loving be natural as breathing… And people will untie themselves,… Unfold and yawn and stretch and sp… Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed return…

Cats no less liquid than their sha… Offer no angles to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat throug… Less than themselves; will not be… To rules or routes for journeys; c…

People who are afraid of themselve… Multiply themselves into families And so divide themselves And so become less afraid. People who might have to go out

Blame us for these who were cradle… Watching our sidelong watching, fe… Playing their blind-man’s-bluff in… Their follow-my-leader on a stair…

I, after difficult entry through m… And stumbling childhood (hitting m… I, intricate, easily unshipped, un… Cut off in my communications; stam… A dialect shared by you, but not y…

Stairs fly as straight as hawks; Or else in spirals, curve out of c… At a ledge to poise their wings be… Stairs sway at the height of their… Like a melody in Tristan;

The birds’ shrill fluting Beats on the pink blind, Pierces the pink blind At whose edge fumble the sun’s Fingers till one obtrudes

In love’s dances, in love’s dances One retreats and one advances, One grows warmer and one colder, One more hesitant, one bolder. One gives what the other needed

The clock disserts on punctuation,… The clock’s voice, thin and dry, a… The clock insists: a lecturer demo… Loudly, with finger raised, when t… But time flows through the room, l…

Dogs take new friends abruptly and… Cats’ meetings are neat, tactual,… Monkeys exchange their fleas befor… Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil rea… We then, at first encounter, shoul…

Light’s patterns freeze: Frost on our faces. Light’s pollen sifts Through the lids of our eyes... Light sinks and rusts

We are a people living in shells a… Crablike; reticent, awkward, deepl… Watching the world from a corner o… Afraid lest someone show that he h… Afraid lest someone weep in the ra…

Architects plant their imagination… Clamp them to the skidding rim of… Leave more than the painter’s or p… Can build their chrysalis round th… They see through stone, they cage…

It is time to give that-of-myself… To offer you now at last my least… Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a d…