Possible to believe in a bearable sort of life
in a white room in one of the tidy anonymous streets
that flash by the elevated subway. Picture it:

What if I told you the truth? What if I could?
The nuptial trek of the bower apes in May:
At night in the mountain meadow their clucking cries,

Temples look like discarded alphabets.
We loved lying in their shadows lazily
deciphering and resting and laying bets

I love you. Woody,
when you peck
on the head

You could never really say what it is like,
this hour of drinking wine together
on a hot summer night, in the living room

For a saving grace, we didn’t see our dead,
Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there

 A certain eminent alchemist wrote of that country that it is to be found wherever it has been placed by the first and most important need of the human mind, the same need that called into being geometry and science, philosophy and religion, morality and art. The above-mentioned alchemist—he was an ally of Descartes—also wrote that the name of the country 

Two rooms, rather, one flight up, half-seen
Through the gilt palm fronds of rue Messaline.

Sparse furnishings: work table, lamp, two chairs,

When I was green,
Green as the light beneath these leaves,
I used to say:

So complete, the imago of consciousness,

the mosquito’s predatory whine
beauties itself in the clothing of childhood.