It was where the wooden bridge
crosses to Porto Corsini on the open sea
and a few men, in slow motion, lower

Crack of a starting-pistol. Jean Jaurès
dies in a wine-puddle. Who or what stares
through the café-window créped in powder-smoke?

I am very lucky but that’s not life.

Before dawn, on the street again,
beneath sky that washes me
with ice, smoke, metal. 

On the floor in an apartment
on Boston Boulevard, he knows
he’s going to die.

Jesus, the dirt on the walls
is coming from my body,
and love,

And the stone edifice stood perfectly still—
Like the parents of that imbecile, shocked
By the ingenuity it showed in its own destruction.

The dandelion was hidden
That day in June
When the moon eclipsed the prairie

The river ripples in the sun
women and men come and are gone

in back of light, night—anew the undoing
evening in us ending a day of dying