It was a pretty boat, tied to the pier,
greeting a city with streets of water,
the great gold griffin of its tall smokestack

I gave up some of my bitterness. Let me tell you why.

It is true, as I have implied, that everyone should give up his mission, whether it’s to save the world, as mine always has been, or to live the life of a Don Juan.

Long past that moment,
                I might guess when it was,
                but strangely I have no

she’d rather hobble to the window
           to look out on garages and planets

That woman on the beach camouflaged
in sand (in California where
they have Satanic rituals now)

On the farm this had been the hour
Persimmon leaves rang like iron
Or the sound of a screendoor slamming

the only difference
now is that I’m an incurable romantic with an
incurable wound.

When I am 12,000 miles from her
she will take her head
and throw it off a cliff. 

Winsome Bob meets Katherine & drops Nancy.
Nancy burrows even deeper
into her studies of semiology, at Yale.