this time has finished me.
I feel like the German troops
whipped by snow and the communists
walking bent
with newspapers stuffed into

he drank wine all night of the
28th, and he kept thinking of her:
the way she walked and talked and
the way she told him things that s
but were not, and he knew the colo

she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
steamer.

at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table

of course, I may die in the next t
and I’m ready for that
but what I’m really worried about
that my editor—publisher might ret
even though he is ten years younge

in the hospitals and jails
it’s the worst
in madhouses
it’s the worst
in penthouses

the mockingbird had been following
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on p

the hearse comes through the room
the beheaded, the disappeared, the
mad.
the flies are a glue of sticky pas
their wings will not

when I look back now
at the abuse I took from
her
I feel shame that I was so
innocent,

drunk again at 3 a.m. at the end o
of wine, I have typed from a dozen
poesy
an old man
maddened for the flesh of young gi