On cold days
it is easy to be reasonable,
to button the mouth against kisses,

In order to describe the appropriate action or conduct for any eventuality, we must first codify all eventualities. This is not so much forecasting the future, as it is prescribing all extrapolations of human capabilities; it is thus a concern with, not time, but exigencies extant in inner resources. 

I won't pretend I haven't ever cried; 
that would be rather foolish under the circumstances; 
I have been myself at times astonished 

The point is that love & love alone
holds up my feet as they step from
Bourbon to Rampart Street

look silly, look shot, look
O so American cheesecake!

you have to be ready for it to start sprouting in your hands;
you have to stick it in the ground like a piece of willow;

Let me please look into my window on 103rd Street
    one more time—
without crying, without tearing the satin, without touching

There is just so much feeling left in me for my old ghost
and I will spend it all in one last outburst of charity.

Come with me to Stanley’s and spend your life
weeping in the small park on 106th Street.

the biggest bore in town
arrives at my party
as if he were invited

and begins to tell me
the details of what a terrible
time he had getting here

but it was worth it he says
and I know he will be
the last to leave