House, coffeehouses, neighborhood: setting
that I see and where I walk; year after year.

Here let me stop. Let me too look at Nature for a while.
The morning sea and cloudless sky
a brilliant blue, the yellow shore: all

Quickly done, on the deck of the ship;
an enchanting afternoon.
The Ionian Sea all around us.

Damon the artisan (none as fine as
he in the Peloponnese) is
fashioning the Retinue of Dionysus

But you, are you Christians?
So be it, you are Christians.
At night one could be.

In the seething almost Indian heat
of an exaggerated July in the city
the remaining inhabitants cautiously

Isn’t it amazing that one evening
sliding the bread into its paper sack
I start all over with the same old speech,

Oh really, she’s with somebody?
So she’s with somebody.
Is she really with somebody?

Surely it’s ridiculous maybe even scandalous
that I feel such overpowering envy
for the eleven-year-old son who’s dozing

There she is turned into a lollipop
a large egg-shaped lollipop,
not passed around, but twirled in the mouth,