Sleeping within earshot of the Aegean
once more, I forget where I am
a second & mistake the surfs white noise
for rain, unheard-of here

The madhouse statuary seemed to dispel the pre-life we gave it. 
in sleep, to become the one bauble rescued from that  hoard, whose shapes 
no one now will know. It cannot be said they existed. Yet

‘We went to New York,’ Kathy said.
‘Colin was painting well then, and he was
on the edge of a breakthrough, he said.
Breakdown was more like it. He was drinking,

The unsigned architecture of loneliness
is becoming taller, finding a way farther
above the horizontal flowering
of the Cold War, the peonies

I glory centennially slow-
ly in being Guugumbakh the
strangular fig bird-born to overgrow
the depths of this wasp-leafed stinging-tree,

  “Who’s there?”
  “Manto, sir.”
  “Manto?”
  “Yes, sir. your youngest son.”

At seventeen I’ve come to read a poem
At Princeton. Now my young hosts inquire
If I would like to meet Professor Einstein.
But I’m too conscious I have nothing to say

  Is it because of history or is it because of matter,
mother Matter—the opposite of In-
  terpretation: his consort: (his purple body lies
shattered against terrible

Books
There are books that talk about the Panama Canal
I don’t know what the card catalogs say
And I don’t pay any attention to the financial pages

The sore trees cast their leaves
too early. Each twig pinching
shut like a jabbed clam.
Soon there will be a hot gauze of snow