Posters of Juliette Greco, the Eiffel
Tower. A good French bistro in the Village,
Its cuisine by some oversight not yet
Widely known; all the more murmured over

In the turbulent career of the patriarch Photius
there can have been few days more glorious
than Saturday March 29th 867.
It was on this day that he delivered his seventeenth sermon.

The first time I saw it, I thought what an ugly specimen. It looked like Grandma’s bathing cap, grown green and small after all these years. I sliced it open and tasted the pale flesh. And gradually she offered herself up leaf by leaf. In her depths she held a tiny, faded star, a spark that fell in the meteor shower over Frank’s garden. 

The trees were soon hushed in the resonance
of darkest emerald as we rushed by
on 322, that route which took us from

White’s designed to fake an edifice,
but the matted crenellation of reed-thatch
throws it to the side. A squadron of crows
clarifies the rhythm, carries the eye through

Today we are going into shelter,
we are going underground to discover the passage that leads
to the next world. We will be happy there,
or we will not worry about happiness; we will make neat designs

We trapped him—
the dignified male
with the graceful neck—

I support the animals’ urge to survive.
So much for opinions. Slithering, writhing,
nosing my way through dirt, I can identify
with that. I joke to keep the system going.

I’ve chosen to take the stairs.
It’s harder, but quicker
than waiting for the elevator
which seems eternally stuck on R—Roof.

—Where to, Doctor? Cemetery?
—Yes, my friend, making my grave rounds. Our mother’s there,
my brother too, and the wife’s niece, buried last year,