This tree keeps falling over. I prop it up,
it falls again. And the rain falls
day after day like a broken wet record.

I hate the quiet, green suburban hills
of Scythia, and all the new-built houses,
all alike, around which children play

Bolinas, I was near there once, 
but that was years ago

               I was given the Earth

I walk around with no ideals or goals. I pass ripe blackberry bushes.

There’s a man in me who would prove. He is right but little else. My knowledge of people was built up somewhere else. It was a heavy-handed preparation and it dies hard.

I blew money. I lost things. I got over the loud thing for awhile. Loud or quiet is about the same. It means you don’t have anything to come on to people with. And you have to give up first.

This new world defies sublimation.
Villagers, come to witness and welcome,

Their feet must be crossed, ankle over ankle,
so no man can swim through and enter.

On cleared earth, kittens play in bowls or are
forever dozing. Milk goats wait to be milked.

My classmates straighten and fall
quiet in their chairs, ready to go
home, their fingers interlocked

At Christmastime in sixth grade I gave out
three dozen Berol Black Warrior pencils,

For noble persons, madness seems to have been
A matter of custom--in the old romances.
Alas! I shall be mad, they say, and at once