No earthly image —only clouds,
affluent clouds, seen from high above,
still bright at the approach of evening.

It isn’t worth our while to fret about
our excellence or impotence in art.
I would have liked to be wilder, bolder,

What do I see? What do I wish to tell.
How haunting the shadow of a metal stair
Circling a tank is in the evening sun?

    People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself. Why is this young man flirting with this old man?

Scourging the sea with rods
To punish it for what it has engulfed.
Or running naked with your bronzed friend

Over rooftops, over time
the rain washes. And walls
that had watched men die