Unwrap the message hidden in a wound
Or a word: a branching spray of avowals, cut.

An emptied wineglass
White windows reflect in
Billowing like sails.

A man once rode away on a yellow crane,
leaving only this empty pavilion.
Once gone, the yellow crane never returns;

the farmer’s wife imagined she could hear them
slipping away like daughters
over the rough stone wall

This is not Dante. 
This is a photograph of Dante. 
This is a film showing an actor who pretends to be Dante. 

It’s an awesome thing, when fate takes you at your word 
at eighteen or twenty. If Dreams weren’t greater than Action. . . 
Happiness on this earth! One has to be pretty vulgar 

I stood by the dark barn and called 
and called to her by name, 
into the labyrinth of stalls 

      It is not consumption of meat,
the great food-chain waste, that makes one ugly.
      Watching apes pelt enemies with dung

I.
I will tell you. Maybe 
You’re leaning in the open 
Doorway of some Irish bar, 

The lighthouse as an image
of loneliness has its limits.

For as we stand on the shore