If you put one leg
ahead of your body
balance on it and swing

On May 11th, 1943, my father, terminal,
hugged me at home in a New York blackout
and kissed me in his bathrobe goodbye forever

There will never again
be this driveway
of fresh snow, one pair

Now he is embarrassed even to ask her for a cigarette. His mother would not have refused him, but his mother doesn’t smoke. Neither does he. It was only a pretext.

honing their teeth
on the current
that is always against them.

I wish I lay in your arms only, yours alone with you alone with me, my lovely ghost whose body I have never seen.

When I opened my eyes, a doe was standing only a few feet away from me.

One evening beside the river, only its name. Only one river, the Ohio, that is the loneliest river in the world.

The loneliness I felt for you and the loneliness
You felt for me
Was hideous, it was the true hell of love.

   I can’t write a damned thing, which was all I wanted to do.
   And all I wanted to do was write something that you could
understand.