the train has left the 
station you can’t take it. 
Once the promise has been 

He was middle-aged which 
means that the mixture of 
death and life in him was 

When cloud cover com- 
plicates the crossing 
all we can do is look 

 I tried, and each attempt was a fiasco. 
I yearned, but every love of mine was wrong. 
I needed, and the shame was overwhelming. 

If you’d seen
        lightning nets in clear water, 
midnight blue beyond the reefs;

On leftovers ana breakfast   like the spleenish wulf the wéstenas chase. 

He sets out hungry,   nose in the wind, up the wulfhleoþu. 

After a luckless trek,   he gilleþ; and gaunt companions answer 

Rowans—not yet fully rowan red 
not yet in that tone they take on later 
of ember, berry, October, and death. 

I  

Things you said in drugstores 
when buying painkillers 
or at your tailor’s 

Never lonelier than in August: 
hour of plenitude—in the country 
the red and golden tassels, 

I  

O that we might be our ancestors’ ancestors. 
A clump of slime in a warm bog. 
Life and death, fertilizing and parturition