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Gloria in your opera gloves Among these ruins see not the glory that was but that it is. Hollowed of purpose behold Light falling withstand Its song hums you & leads to leas of morning.

Night’s glass towers, Rapunzel’d by the sun, still stand at attention when the work’s all done like dragon dogs guarding the Mahayana heavens, or sentries at the outpost, leaning, nodding. Solariums of labor, they’re useless to the moon, pitched punctuation without any words. Harbors of security to paper-clipping functions now rest in darkness as mute…

Nothing else to do But love while waiting. We hold our hands To the flames until we no longer know What we wait for.

Friends should learn to think differently about leaving— everything goes away: the sun, clouds, even stars become nothing after a while                            *   *   * Remember when we found that old mill by the stream? The fallen walls, leaves dropping, ancient mounds of archeology Remember being 13? The angle of the light? And how we…

These files in longhand preserve . lies I tell myself about shoulderblades . whose outlines I never traced about eyes that once met mine . but did not turn back after they had passed . I arrange them by last name made up when I can’t recall . exchanged when I can . Each tells…

What happened to sweet heat, the sneezeweed, the luna moth and gingham sleeve, sipped Slurpies and reedy kayaks, the sponge-bathed trees? Why are the nights so flustered and furrowed, dusks crimped by crooked V’s of snow geese bored with palmettos? Why does the full moon pinprick the draft, neurotic winds reentering therapy, the light, an…

We play this same game at the end of every day, which you love as much as I: I have you in a gentle headlock, I’m hard against you, my mouth, my breath a graze from your ear— but I’m not talking to your ear, I’m pouring pictures direct to your tender brain: I will…

I need you to get me a ticket, he said. For what, I asked, waking at the foot of his bed. For the train, he said. They say I need a ticket. Except for the small lamp the room was dark. The air was cool and clear. The first night of September. Do you know…

translated from the Greek by Stratis Haviaras & Dana Bonstrom On a wager one journeys alone, else There is neither journey nor wager. Passepartout, your name spoke for itself but beneath lay contempt and coercion. Loyalty? What loyalty? Till when? And why? What of yours was at risk? Would I win the wager you’d doubtless…