It seemed the kind of life we want… Wild strawberries and cream in the… Sunlight in every room. The two of us walking by the sea n… Some evenings, however, we found o…

And the one that’s got it in for y… Mister, that keeps taunting you In an old man’s morning wheeze Every time you so much as glance a… Or blurt something in your defense…

With only his dim lantern To tell him where he is And every time a mountain Of fresh corpses to load up Take them to the other side

In my great grandmother’s time, All one needed was a broom To get to see places And give the geese a chase in the… •

You must come to them sideways In rooms webbed in shadow, Sneak a view of their emptiness Without them catching A glimpse of you in return.

A New Version: 1980 What is that little black thing I… in the white? Walt Whitman One

A world’s disappearing. Little street, You were too narrow, Too much in the shade already. You had only one dog,

On the road with billowing poplars… In a country flat and desolate To the far-off gray horizon, where… A man and a woman went on foot, Each carrying a small suitcase.

Not a peep out of you now After the bedlam early this mornin… Are you begging pardon of me Hidden up there among the leaves, Or are your brains momentarily ove…

The mad and homeless take shelter Against the cold weather In tombs of the fabulously rich, Where they huddle in their rags And make themselves scarce only

Boss of all bosses of the universe… Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, w… And whatever else you’re good at. Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonig… Dip in ink the comets’ tails.

The mail truck goes down the coast Carrying a single letter. At the end of a long pier The bored seagull lifts a leg now… And forgets to put it down.

How much death works, No one knows what a long Day he puts in. The little Wife always alone Ironing death’s laundry.

Shoes, secret face of my inner lif… Two gaping toothless mouths, Two partly decomposed animal skins Smelling of mice-nests. My brother and sister who died at…