She cannot hideher line of footprints in the snow.The trail leads from her window—
Who is awake but the nightwatchman?Or the grim laborer in the graveyardShift? The spirit world is in transit—
I write in time to break into timelessness.
we love them too much to see them—
No, not insurance. What Imeant to say was “double identity,”
as in Boutros Boutros-Ghali,William Carlos Williams, Sirhan Sirhan,
my son breathes to leave meto leave the lean-toof family: extended and penal
She kept putting off sending him the book,then one afternoon she recognized the author walking up Fifth Avenue
One night, she turns the novel’s last page. This is all—small house, plain street, some trees, sweet and irksome neighbors, dishes, bills, water leaks,
Nervous, twigs split, become swallows, jeté the platinum poring chits
over horizon’s bistered tinge.Is a murderer secreted in us all,
Unmarried, the heart ejaculateswhat it must, scarlet-purled, arterial,
away, away. Or conversely, married,it requires all—venous, freighted with wastes.