Many fish in those murky ocean caves
of Mexico, Brazil, Croatia, Oman

have no eyes.
Though in the streams outside—

Lost souls in Chekhov watch the fireflies emerge
from the woods, haltingly, and mope: "One day we'll know
the reason we have lived and why we have worked

Now the blue fruit
And frosty weeds decay;
Now, October’s root

We woke together, arm in arm,
    Deep in the summer loft,
Over the sleeve of ravelled sill

The house
A frightened face
In the window of another house.

The branches shake, Jimmy, it rains in that trance;
Tuxedo in the colonnades asks after your breakfast.
A fire rises and falls in the house of Cadmus

The things that I habitually say
are obvious. Why repeat them? Besides,
they are never what I meant to say.

Another cow was floating by us,
hilariously calm, bell-deep 
in milkweed and tansy. She looked 

Each of us waking to the window’s light
Has found the curtains changed, our pictures gone;
Our furniture has vanished in the night

Leather banquettes in old green edge the room.
A drab green of animal scales, guarded 
Under agave, on days too hot to move.