Already six years past your age! The steps in Rome, the house near Hampstead Heath, & all your fears that you might cease to be

After the college reading, the eager students gather. They ask me

The decorum of fire... —Pablo Neruda We learned the decorum of fire, the flame’s curious symmetry, the blue heat at the center of the…

Male? Female? God doesn’t care about sex & the long tree-shaded avenue

I mourn a dead friend, like myself… —Pablo Neruda about César Vallej… I looked at the book. ‘It will stand,’ I thought. Not a palace

I sit at my desk alone as I did on many Sunday afternoons when you came back to me, your arms aching for me,

I am not interested in my body– the part that stinks & rots & brings forth life,

On the first night of the full moon, the primeval sack of ocean broke, & I gave birth to you

In Autumn, as in Spring, the sap flows, the sap wishes to race against heartbeats

Smoke, it is all smoke in the throat of eternity. . . . For centuries, the air was full of… Whistling up chimneys on their spiky brooms

The great bed of the world arching over graves over Babi Yar with its multitude of bones, with battalions of screams

Living in a house near the Black Forest, without any clocks, she’s begun to listen to the walls.

Could I unthink you, little heart, what would I do? throw you out with last night’s garbage,

Baby-witch, my daughter, my worship of the Goddess alone condemns you to the fire. . .