It makes one all right, though you hadn’t thought of it,
A sound like the sound of the sky on fire, like Armageddon,
Whistling and crackling, the explosions of sunlight booming

Lillian Russell, I think of her standing
at the rail of the Niew Amsterdam as it sails
through Caracas to get a taste of the real slums

Oh tear-filled one who, like a sky held back,
grows heavy above the landscape of her sorrow.
And when she weeps, the gentle raindrops fall,

Oh the losses into the All, Marina, the stars that are falling!
We can’t make it larger, wherever we fling ourselves, to whatever
star we may go! In the Whole, all things are already numbered.

World was in the face of the beloved.
Suddenly it poured out and was gone:
world is outside, world cannot be grasped.

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space
in which you see all forms intensified.
(Out in the Open, you would be denied

There stands death, a bluish distillate
in a cup without a saucer. Such a strange
place to find a cup: standing on

Often I gazed at you in wonder: stood at the window begun
the day before, stood and gazed at you in wonder. As yet the new town
seemed denied to me, and the unpersuaded landscape kept darkening

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most
intimate. From images that are full, the spirit’s
stream plunges down to others that suddenly must be filled;

You who never arrived
in my arms, beloved, who were lost
from the start,