I stood by the river where the flesh of our world
Is swept it knows not where (but I knew)
And thought how one day the bottom land

Among many leaves I step on a letter
That begins I love you dearly.

While the soul is our creation, anyway I take care of mine,

I will examine my life through curled threads
and short straws and little drops of food.

If I could do exactly what I wanted
I would move a harpsichord into my back yard
and ask Elaine Comparone to play for me all morning.

wishing, this time, they could sail through the sky like
    horses,

We expected a nerve, a move of some kind.
But the nothing that happens in death
was occurring.

Each tree is hung with ascensions of ice
and things lie sleeping under a curtain of snow.

And there, on the machine’s edge, the outrage
of the tiniest rusty star

Folded, closed up, sheltered
beneath a wreath of bright green, in Eden
feeding on happy moths