It is cold but I know how to be
Even colder. I have had centuries 
Of practice. Listen to me: I have

I am everyone’s receptacle of secrets.
Hallow as a gilded reliquary,
I hold each lie and confession.

Bed warming, I lie open and exact
As a needle preparing to suture.

Darkened by time, the masters, like our memories, mix 
And mismatch,
                                   and settle about our lawn furniture, like air

The store dick lays a hand on your shoulder
Three steps from the exit. He asks what’s 
In your pockets but it’s more like a statement

The luscious reddening gold of the emir’s coin
Buys my encomia. I haggle in magnificence,
Or then I elbow-dust his aureole.

We could have finished had he kept his mind
to this, a solitary gem, its mount 
near Oberammergau, the home of wood-

I take her, painless, through the glass.
Her dress tears off. I covet that.
The glass is beautiful, sharp and steep—

Can one think, in sunglasses, in the park; think
with the children playing and the adult banter,
and someone smoking; and experiment, in ink,

A wanderer in a pair of ten-league boots,
with a faithful servant blessed by second sight, 
          I cross a romantic moor