Where maid and eunuch whisper ‘love and death’,
While Hawk and Eagle grouse and peck and lurch,
Two parakeets upon a single perch.

The children have packed up the light
And gone home for the bedtime story
In which Jack wakes the Sleeping Fury.

Liberal, blue-eyed, shivering, trying not
to look like a bill
collector or detective,

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

I lived in the poor part of town
where the hookers hung out on the street corners at night,
and sometimes,

Winter is thick as rock
In the quarry of icy season
And snow squeals underfoot:

you are a broken pane,
or else a bent spoon.

Let them be square as boxes,
more square than milk cartons.

You are there, I am here and the plagiarists
are in the libraries, where they belong.

I rubbed my eyes. The lightning 
Caught a curving line 
Of tents and lost them. Under