(Nimmerwahr, 1868) Niemand’s suggested
emendation, as well as his translation based on it, will
plainly not do; among other things, the pure

Tired now, by candlelight and in the grip
Of much undoing to be done, we strip
   Away at varnish, burn old wills and deeds,

Again this first fall weekend our children dance
(There is little dancing here without our dancers.)
They’ve returned to college, adding to the distance.

My voice then quietly intoned:
Let me be transfigured.
Let me know the opulence of night.

Monuments: They arrest the eye
like these twin tongues of ruddy stone
adorning Basel’s riverside.

Our forest, our ocean, it stretched westward from the edge
of town. Knee-high at fireworks time, taller by August
than any child. Flat as a bed the prairie, spread quilt

A round white troll with a black, greasy
heart shuddered and hummed “Diogenes,
Diogenes,” while it sloshed the wash.

During the screened-porch dinner of corn on the cob,
pork chops, tomatoes like red meat, warm and bleeding,
I felt the first stirring. The air moved, cracked the damp

Ask the sand crabs for an inch by inch
description of my hips:
they’ve been scaling the depression I left

When the man can’t sleep, he builds
a matchstick replica of Auschwitz
in his basement, working from memory.