Into my heart a sure desire enters
that the slanderer can't ever destroy, nor the fingernail
of the slanderer, so long as against his evil speech I arm

For hours now the Last Supper has been over.
And the beating almost over, and morning’s cry
Yet to be heard by the workmen in the courtyard

I used to pretend I stumbled into the place
casually, after a long day shopping or
I'd pretend I was a drunk

I was not ready for your form to be cold
Ever. Even in life

You did not inhabit, necessarily, a form,

Concrete forest, puddled houses; clouds
sweep across the sky—a thunderhead
settles in. Think how anger seethes

How faceless their pathos, the ovals
of these heads, huge, smooth, hermetic
as eggs, and solemn, especially the man’s

Where the stone foaress shoulders the leaning city,
where vacant windows front cracked rooftiles, dislodged
   stones,

“Why did that man stare, and stare? All afternoon it seemed
     he stared

—But who reads that shit? About as true to life as a
   velvet grape.
—I think he judges poetry with his dick. And poets, too.

Did we run out of things or just a name for you?
Above us the sun doubles its acclaim for you.

Negative sun or negative shade pulled from the ground …