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and I have five. Surrounded by them, I was manless for years. You led me to kindergarten. In the back alleys of our housing project, in the winter halflight, no neighborhood kid could come between us. At home you called my faults like foul plays: “Error.” This is the walled city, family. Within, all the…

In thrice 10,000 seasons, I will come back to this world In a white cotton dress. Kingdom of After My Own Heart. Kingdom of Fragile. Kingdom of Dwarves. When I      come home, Teacups will quiver in their Dresden saucers, pentatonic      chimes Will move in wind. A covey of alley cats will swarm on the      side…

I was talking about mutual responsibility; you had been interested in my analysis of the problems of dual control in driving lessons; having control when you had none, I said, “Remember that I am saying all this and that I am taking full responsibility for saying this,” and poured my heart out to you. That…

After the cocoon, then the monarch; after the first frost on the glass, we watch the leaves: red for maple, brown for oak. For the last day, wings. In the ancient ceremony silent players enter the festive houses, play dice with the citizens. So these days follow, September to November, like the click of bone…

I                  Having roughed up the waters wind explodes like the curses from fist-ravaged lips                        in the cold superpower's                  innards, squeezing trite wobbles      of the do-re-mi from sooted trumpets that lisp.                        Nonprincess and porous                        nonfrogs hug the terrain, and a star shines its…

All identity is active statement. —George Steiner 1.      A file of dated letters and a voice      the important survivor agrees at last      to your visit, two days for your recorder.      What you know, you review, earliest      meetings, estrangements, awkward returnings,      rumors and echoes of rumors, questions,      a desire to breathe that air.      Finally hours of…

for Dawn Chin, a student from Korea You're barely twenty. Your last essay for me begins: “Until I realized the value of life, I sure went through a lot of anguish of the heart.” All our Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays together, I put in of and the and couldn't explain why we say, “I tried to…

June 4, 1977 A falling star, or worse, a planet (true or bogus) may thrill your idle eye with its quick hocus-pocus. Look, look then at that locus which doesn't deserve sharp      focus. *     *      * There frowning forests stand decked out in rags and tatters. Departing from point ‘A,’ a train there bravely scatters its…

In a dirt village near Sierra Plata, men who are their own shadows, their own wives, drive flatbeds to the taverns; sweat-stained, with gold dust stuffed in little sacks that dangle along the hard edges, the steel curves of their bodies. Tense as switchblades, they wait for the finger-touch of a woman, a thief, or…