Love, death, sleeping with somebody else’s husband or wife-this is what poetry is about-Eskimo, Aztec,

I mourn a dead friend, like myself… —Pablo Neruda about César Vallej… I looked at the book. ‘It will stand,’ I thought. Not a palace

I put our books face to face so they could talk. They whispered about us. I put yours on top of mine. They would not mate.

Bobbing in the waters of the womb, little godhead, ten toes, ten fing… & infinite hope, sails upside down through the worl… My bones, I know, are only a cage

Could I unthink you, little heart, what would I do? throw you out with last night’s garbage,

Looking for a place where we might turn off the inner dialogue, the monologue of futures & regrets,

The lessons we learned here (fumbling with our lunchbags, handkerchiefs & secret cheeks of bubblegum) were graver than any

Sometimes the poem doesn’t want to come; it hides from the poet like a playful cat who has run

You gave me the child that seamed my belly & stitched up my life. You gave me: one book of love poem… five years of peace

I try to keep falling in love if only to keep death at bay.

We have a small sculpture of H… Nothing would surprise him. The beast in the jungle was what h… Edith Wharton’s obfuscating older… He fled the demons

After the first astounding rush, after the weeks at the lake, the crystal, the clouds, the water… the snow breaking under our boots… & the long mornings in bed. .…

A delicate border. A nonexistent… The train obligingly dissolves in… The G.I. next to me is talking wa… I don’t ‘know the Asian mind,’ he… Moving through old arguments.

For Naomi Lazard Sometimes I can’t wait until I… —Naomi Lazard My friends are tired. The ones who are married are tired

Narrowing life because of the fear… narrowing it between the dust mote… narrowing the pink baby between the green-limbed monsters, & the drooling idiots,