The ivory wedding hat came tumbling down—
how long had it been stored away, untouched
like desire repressed and bound—

I can’t imagine your not existing; but on the other hand
I could have lived and died without knowing you at all.
What Mayans you had in you! what stinging Aztecs!

You separated my hometown from Kentucky
And south of us you deftly touched Indiana. Ohioans drove back over you

After I found my blood in trouble
I could hear its rapid
underground current swell, terrorists

In the trees from Faulkner, Calvino,
and probably as many writers
         as I was starting to know.

Plain and simple: he failed.
Lost a battle. And the angry
Athenians wanted him dead.

Too brief to be called
A song, yet so distinctive:
What bird can it be?

"A god can do it"—yes. But a girl?
The Greeks named it hubris,
As if she had a choice: this is all

One definition of love
is the grocery list, its
shorthand reckoning

His manner went to Queen Elizabeth
decapitating Mary—Queen of Gaul.
Throckmorton had become a shibboleth.