Nobody in the lane, and nothing, n
Blackberries on either side, thoug
A blackberry alley, going down in
Somewhere at the end of it, heavin
Big as the ball of my thumb, and &

Search thou my heart;
If there be guile,
It shall depart
Before thy smile.
Search thou my soul;

Those blessèd structures, plot and
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:

The stiff spokes of this wheel

touch the sore spots of the earth.
On the Potomac, swan—white

power launches keep breasting the
Otters slide and dive and slick ba

Only teaching on Tuesdays, book—w
in pajamas fresh from the washer e
I hog a whole house on Boston’s
“hardly passionate Marlborough St
where even the man

Forty years ago we were here
where we are now,
the same erotic May—wind blew
the trees from there to here—
the same tang of metal in the mout

“I won’t go with you. I want to s
That’s how I threw cold water
on my Mother and Father’s
watery martini pipe dreams at Sund
... Fontainebleau, Mattapoisett,

Nautilus Island’s hermit
heiress still lives through winter
her sheep still graze above the se
Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;

Your nurse could only speak Itali
but after twenty minutes I could i
and tears ran down my cheeks....
When I embarked from Italy with m
the whole shoreline of the Golfo d

Now that I kneel at the throne, O
Pity and pardon me.
Much have I striven to sing the s
Brother of beast and tree;
Yet when the stars catch me alone

[SPAIN.]
It is a lie—-their Priests, their
Their Saints, their... all they f
Are lies, and lies—-there! through
And ceiling, there! and walls and

It is a lie—their Priests, their
Their Saints, their... all they f
Are lies, and lies—there! through
And ceiling, there! and walls and
There, lies, they lie—shall still

I was thinking of a son.
The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its l
I feel the November

Here in this valley of discrete ac
We have not mountains, but mounts,
To the Adirondacks, to northern M
Themselves mere rocky hillocks to
Still, they’re out best mustering

Compelled by calamity’s magnet
They loiter and stare as if the ho
Burnt—out were theirs, or as if th
Some scandal might any minute ooze
From a smoke—choked closet into li

The smile of iceboxes annihilates
Such blue currents in the veins of
I hear her great heart purr.
From her lips ampersands and perce
Exit like kisses.

Spry, wry, and gray as these Marc
Percy bows, in his blue peajacket,
He is recuperating from something
The narcissi, too, are bowing to s
It rattles their stars on the gree

There is this white wall, above wh
Infinite, green, utterly untouchab
Angels swim in it, and the stars,
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bl

Worship this world of watercolor m
in glass pagodas hung with veils o
where diamonds jangle hymns within
and sap ascends the steeple of the
A saintly sparrow jargons madrigal

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,

It is ten years, now, since we row
The sun flamed straight down that
That summer we wore black glasses
We were always crying, in our spar
In …

Empty, I echo to the least footfa
Museum without statues, grand with
In my courtyard a fountain leaps a
Nun—hearted and blind to the world
Exhale their pallor like scent.

Who are these people at the bridge
The rector, the midwife, the sexto
In my sleeveless summery dress I
And they are all gloved and covere
They …

(I)
This is the sea, then, this great
How the sun’s poultice draws on my
Electrifyingly—colored sherbets, s
By pale girls, travel the air in s

What is this, behind this veil, is
It is shimmering, has it breasts,
I am sure it is unique, I am sure
When I am quiet at my cooking I f
‘Is this the one I …

Tell me what you see in it:
The pine tree like a Rorschach—bl
black against the orange light:
Plant an orange pumpkin patch
which at twelve will quaintly hatc

I am sending back the key
that let me into bluebeard’s study
because he would make love to me
I am sending back the key;
in his eye’s darkroom I can see

Mayday: two came to field in such
`A daisied mead’, each said to eac
So were they one; so sought they c
Across barbed stile, through flock
`No pitchforked farmer, please,' s

I made a fire; being tired
Of the white fists of old
Letters and their death rattle
When I came too close to the wast
What did they know that I didn’t?

This is winter, this is night, sma
A sort of black horsehair,
A rough, dumb country stuff
Steeled with the sheen
Of what green stars can make it to