Here in bed behind a brick wall I can make order and meaning, but how do I begin? How do I emerge without panic to the sounds and mass

I am looking for a past I can rely on in order to look to death with equanimity. What was given me:

It is heart-rending to know a kiss cannot cure the world of its illne… nor can your happiness, nor your t… of being a discrete person, for th… fall like rain into the ground

The steam hammer pounds with a reg… Neither the hammer nor the steel s… terrible meeting between them, pro… that some things must be done, reg… cost too is absorbed in the doing…

You wept in your mother’s arms and I knew that from then on I was to forget myself. Listening to your sobs, I was resolved against my will

Late in 1962 New York newspapers… old child being raped on a roof, a… ground. I draw near to the roof’s edge and seek someone to lift

Whatever we do, whether we light strangers’€™ cigarettes’€”it may t… to be a detective wanting to know… with a light on a lonely street ni… or whether we turn away and get a…

As I enter the theatre the play i… I hear the father say to the son o… You’€™ve taken the motor apart. The son replies, The roof is leak… The father retorts, The tire is f…

Without sexual attraction, there i… the brutal movement of the sea. The face peers out of its skeletal… and hands reach like bone. Without love, the streets

at fifty I approach myself, eighteen years of age, seated despondently on the concret… of my father’s house, wishing to be gone from there

I don’t know which to mourn. Both… my car. I feel strongly about my c… wife. Without my car, I can’t lea… being alone. My wife gave me two c… no longer live with us, as was to…

I’m very pleased to be a body. Ca… As you hold mine I feel firmly as… and I think all life is a body. I… especially with the sun shining on… I have hurt the body. That’s when…

This tree has two million and seve… Perhaps I missed a leaf or two bu… at having persisted in counting by… and marked down on paper with penc… Adding them up was a pleasure I c…

Interesting that I have to live w… It stands, prepared to emerge, and… with me—this other thing I will be… and yet it keeps me erect and limb… my rival.

I close my eyes like a good little… as I was told to do by my mother w… and before bed I brush my teeth an… as I was told, and look forward to… I do all things required of me to…