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

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

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…

One shows me how to lie down in a… Another how to slip my hand under… Another how to kiss with a mouth f… Another how to catch fireflies in… Here is a stable with a single bla…

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...

The obvious is difficult To prove. Many prefer The hidden. I did, too. I listened to the trees. They had a secret

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.

The night still frightens you. You know it is interminable And of vast, unimaginable dimensio… “That’s because His insomnia is p… You’ve read some mystic say.

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

Enter without knocking, hard-worki… I’m just sitting here mulling over What to do this dark, overcast day… It was a night of the radio turned… Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dre…

Where it says snow read teeth-marks of a virgin Where it says knife read you passed through my bones like a police-whistle

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…

Here come my night thoughts On crutches, Returning from studying the heaven… What they thought about Stayed the same,

They arrive inside They object at evening. There’s no one to meet them. The lamps they carry Cast their shadows