All the pretty things you do
the way you lean outward
against the window of the train everyday

All this was years ago, but how could I forget
the first thing I did when you finally left me
was grow distinctly unlike myself—so distinctly unlike

This will be your office, Mr. Blank,
While you remain attached to the Poetry .
Division of the Department of Mediocrity.

Telling our story is . . . painful as anything
I’ve ever done. More painful than. A lapse
Of time so long and I’d assumed, wrongly,

Rainstorms that blacken like a headache
where mosses thicken, and the mornings
smell of jonquils, the stillness

When I consider the children of the middle class
as representations of phenomena to my subject sense
I can hardly see them at all, they fade

It is called Trent or Noel
for the most beautiful girl
turning woman on the continent.

You, who live in this world, & claim to understand about everything about life—lyricizing in your written words about how
Love Is At The Heart of Things
(With its lovers coming & going)

The poem is a self-portrait
                                                                      always, no matter what mask
You take off and put back on.

Death stirs under their feet, and the musicians wearing cocked hats in a corner, playing the shepherd’s flute and something that looks like a fiddle, pluck death in broad stringy sweeps