Stone against space, space opening onto mountain—
And the mariner balanced precariously whole

Reading this, you are waiting for the curtain
        To go up on a glade, vistaed valley
Or colonnade of lath. Yet you are not here

Swifts do not sing: 
what they do well 
is sleep on the wing,

I listened hard. I do not believe in ghosts.
  The house was changing. Indeed, I never saw
Such thorough renovation.“You do not know,”

Or was it roots were opening through the white
An underworld thoroughfare towards daylight?

The limbs of the giant spruce that leans
  So close to the house, have formed
A kind of stair, a walkway

I remember you with your loaf of Italian bread

In your mature years after the promised farm
The photo left in your innocence of knickers

A man like snow in Paris beautiful machine
Riding into the stars
A world of Michaels

The violet slave ripped away,
dull muscle that had grown here,
vulgar pillow of the pearl.

The wind is heard hollering
through open spaces
between the dirty sheets.