On the first page of my dreambook It’s always evening In an occupied country. Hour before the curfew. A small provincial city.

The truth is dark under your eyeli… What are you going to do about it? The birds are silent; there’s no o… All day long you’ll squint at the… When the wind blows you’ll shiver…

Great are the Hittites. Their ears have mice and mice have… Their dogs bury themselves and lea… To guard the house. A single weed… Until the spiderwebs spread over t…

The one who had been whispering All along in this empty theater And whose voice I just heard— Or imagined I did Distracted as I was by my own tho…

Fingers in an overcoat pocket. Fingers sticking out of a black leather glove. The nails chewed raw. One play is called “Thieves’ Market,” another “Night in a Dime Museum.” The fingers w...

Father studied theology through th… And this was exam time. Mother knitted. I sat quietly wit… Full of pictures. Night fell. My hands grew cold touching the fa…

I liked my little hole, Its window facing a brick wall. Next door there was a piano. A few evenings a month a crippled old man came to play

There was a melon fresh from the g… So ripe the knife slurped As it cut it into six slices. The children were going back to sc… Their mother, passing out paper pl…

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…

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… •

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

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.

Where the path to the lake twists… A puff of dust, the kind bare feet… Is what I saw in the dying light, Night swooping down everywhere els… A low branch heavy with leaves

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