Poetry

and everyone was there to watch youdie. We offered youpopsicles, ice, a sponge we’d dab on yourlips. We crowded you,stroked your legs, your hair, tried to keep youkempt without hurting, disturbing you, prodding youuntil your eyes, when they opened, couldn’thold us. We hated that, hated yourstillness, your days of stillness, noteating, not speaking, and we…

Of your things now, onemore of the things that survived you. I wear your long gray herringbone coat intolong gray days, returning alwaysto your other objects: drawers of good silverware, spices, framed madonnas who look at me, wondering what I have done. When you said you were afraid you were going to die,I said Everyone…

Landscape of small saints                    with champagne. Landscapewith island out window                    with window as large as the houseand its shadow Landscape of doors                    and their doorwaysLandscape of the hallway                    that runs between themjoining one outside to the other. Landscape of child                    in doorway smiling and that of the faceswatching the child, thinking                    every face is a landscape. Her first show was in…

Landscape of umbrellas                    flying over Brussels, itself the shadow;somewhere glass sparkles                    in the background, pear treesin the background, flower Landscape through two glasses of water                         the Rhine bordered by treesslightly therefore flowing green                         the boats thus moving through two layers—water glass and river—                         the bells strung betweenthat follow in slight distance                         sketched on a surface that flees. Boats at anchor in…

You said both hermit and hermetic in the same sentence and I saidthat if you are receptive then you don’t need to be an artist. I have hada hermetic life in poetry and in the sanctity of a sacred love, in onesense but not in another. You said the word demarcation and I wasreassured wholly…

Some gnats live on the land and some on the water.Many eat plants and some are carnivores.They are everywhere people are; they liveon subantarctic islands, in deserts, caves.When they fly they’re usually so numerousthey look like weather. The weather at dusk.Some are pests and some control pests.Some don’t bite and die quickly.Some love mushrooms. Others,…

Awfully mortal, aren’t they?Their inner lives twist, wad, and shred.Their outer lives are sometimes called shams. I change oily, stained cases, eventually.Even if you’re tiresome, they’ll prop you,Crease your sleeping skin,Press comfort in. I swam in a case, in a sulphur spring,Surrounded by white cows.I carried laundry down the stairs in oneAfter surgery on a…