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—Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland, June 2000 Last night the shadow of a cloud rolled off the bare mountain like a shawl slipping from the shoulder of a giant. Shirts on the clothesline sagged in rain. We burned turf, fists of earth blackening in the fireplace, room full of poets’ books leaning rumpled, half-asleep. All…

Annoyed with the parochialism of the “fantastic city” of St. Petersburg and close to the unexpected end of his life, Gogol escaped to Rome. He settled in a colony of Russian artists, shared lodgings with his bosom friend, the painter Alexander Ge. On their long walks they discovered “the inner meaning of everything.” Gogol, a…

I spent a night in the Simic woods. I pulled my bed behind me through the trees. I was a plowshare plowing ground mist. Accordion players still playing their accordions Were lying draped over the low branches; And girls ran back and forth through the orchard Tickling their bottoms with partridge wings. “No matter what…

Their place is now taken by ruins, but not by ruins of themselves but of later restorations, Freud said of the Senate and People of Rome—otherwise known as SPQR, inscribed above the arch of Septimius Severus: Senatus Populus Que Romanus Silk Pajamas Quietly Rule Us Seven Peaches Quite Ripe Some Passing Qualm Resurfaced Some Private…

In the apartment next door, a boy plays the piano, Chopin, mostly, though sometimes notes he’s made up. Through the woman’s window climbs the noise of 14th Street: merciless horns, squealing bus brakes, carnival-like music from an ice cream truck belting “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” over and over and over. The phone rings:…

To take,               like water, whatever shape you flow through, fill, or rest in. And to choose that shape. * As: Brian, become a gangster, six feet from my face. Voice no longer a caress but a sharpened projection, belly a ram in a buttoned vest. The whole body shows                                        the thing done: goat-song…

None of us would have admitted having sentiments or fears, but we had to have the right loafers, wide belt, sober tie, a madras jacket, hair just too long, and a studied slouch, suggesting bored intelligence and the athlete’s effortless grace. It was 1967, part and not part of what’s called now, with more than…

1. You’d brought a hand-carved toy, a wooden ring Tied by a thong of leather to a stick And demonstrated with a stab, one quick Thrust through its circle. Shaken by the thing, My gaze slid from your freshman composition Down to your sandals and enameled toes. Come on, you said, let’s cut out—what’s to…

        That rat’s too smart to come to the rows of crumbs I sowed by the pond, he has the patience of true hunger, he’ll wait me out         with the same tenacity I had as a child, hungry to grow strong enough to escape the nunnery without being caught.         I loved the rats…