If I tell a story of America it will be with the needle
splitting Demuth's needle-pocked skin-how his blood blooms
in insulin as he hunches his shoulder to shield the syringe

The café walls are covered with pictures of flying parrots;
I take a table, rest my arms; the table gently tips,
A dozen strangers sit and sit and talk, all they do is lovely,

A canvas we cannot stretch across the frame
nor staple down to fact: a ladder leaning

against an awning, workers pitching tar

A tallow worked into a knot
of rawhide, with a ball of waxy light
tied to a stick, the boy

Birds don't sing, they explain. Only human beings sing.

If half the poets in the world stopped writing, there would still be the same amount of poetry.

If ninety-nine percent of the poets in the world stopped writing poetry, there would still be the same amount of poetry.

If you're thinking of going to Syracuse,
   be modest and do not expect
the bronze warriors of Reggio

The Venetian Republic regarded the art of mirror-making as a state secret, to be conserved by any sanction necessary, including the most extreme.

                                  •

Scuola Veneziana, copia di un alfresco perduto, secolo

The sky flashes past us while we sleep,
deep in our beds, drowning,

cello-shaped in our linen sheets,

Yes, there is a vault in the ruined castle.
Yes, there is a woman waking beside the
gleaming sword she drew from the stone of childhood:

Nasturtium surplus.
         Water curls and lilies,
lily water. Vermilion and orange