My daughter tells me her dream, where she saw The Times on the porch in the morning and knew from the page-sized black of the headlines—WAR— DECLARES WAR—that now it was over, and wept in her dream to think that she’d never have her years, friends, a marriage night, shifting the dreck of everyday life….
In the fierce peak of the day it’s quietly they wade With spread arms into the blue breakers rushing white And swim seemingly with no tension, the arms Curved, the head’s gestures circular and slow. They walk dripping back into the air Of nineteen-fifty-five smiling downward from the glare As if modestly, as they move…
Ten years older in an hour— I see your face smile, your mouth is stepped on without bruising. You are very frightened by the ward, your companions were chosen for age; you are the youngest and sham-flirt with the nurse— your chief thought is scheming the elaborate surprise of your escape. Being old in good…
I love sweets,— heaven would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream . . . But my true self is thin, all profile and effortless gestures, the sort of blond elegant girl whose body is the image of her soul. —My doctors tell me I must give up this ideal;…
They are like two houses Waiting for the same couple. They return late one night, Exhausted and hungry, Only to find their key Fits neither door and yet unlocks The darkness between them. They have mastered the art Of carefully taking each other apart, Of leaving themselves nothing but together, Of fitting piece after piece…
(For Peter Taylor) Southcall— a couple in passage, two Tennessee cardinals in green December outside the window dart and tag and mate— young as they want to be. We’re not. Since my second fatherhood and stay in England, I am a generation older. We are dangerously happy— our book-bled faces streak like red birds, dart…
The old lady’s face. Who knows whose it was? The bus slid by me. Who in the world knows me? She was amazed, amazed. Can death really take me? The bus went away. It took the old lady away.
A girl pushes a bicycle through tall grass, through overturned garden furniture, water rising to her ankles. Cups without handles sail upon the murky water, saucers with fine cracks in the procelain. At the upstairs window, behind damask curtains, the steward’s pale blue eyes follow. He tries to call; shreds of yellow note paper float…
Leaving a taxi at Victoria I saw my own face sharp focused and smaller watching me from a puddle or something I held—your face on my copy of your Collected Stories— seamed with dread and smiling. . . old short-haired poet of the first Depression— now back in currency. My thinking is talking to you—…
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