Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye– kissing the air,

Already six years past your age! The steps in Rome, the house near Hampstead Heath, & all your fears that you might cease to be

For David Karetsky (April 14, 19… Putting the skis down in the white snow, the wind singing, the blizzard of time

Most beautiful of poisons, border-plant, wearing your small green cowl, little friar, little murderer, aconitine flows

Smoke, it is all smoke in the throat of eternity. . . . For centuries, the air was full of… Whistling up chimneys on their spiky brooms

Because my grandmother’s hours were apple cakes baking, & dust motes gathering, & linens yellowing & seams and hems

All over the district, on leather… & brocade couches, on daybeds & ‘professional divans,’ they… The air is thick with it, the ears of analysts must be stick…

If it is only for the taking off– the velvet cloak, the ostrich feather boa, the dress which slithers to the fl… with the sound of strange men sigh…

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

I pass to the other side of the pa… —Pablo Neruda On the other side of the page where the last days go, where the lost poems go,

After the college reading, the eager students gather. They ask me

I sit at home at my desk alone as I used to do on many sunday afternoons when you came back to me,

Is God the one who eats the meat off the bones of dead people? —Molly Miranda Jong—Fast, age 3… God is the one, Molly,

I sleep with double pillows since… Is one of them for you-or is it yo… My bed is heaped with books of poe… I fall asleep on yellow legal pads… Oh the orgies in stationery stores…