Here, where the rivers dredge upthe very stone of Heaven, we name its colors—muttonfat jade, kingfisher jade, jade of appleskin green.

I am your ancestor. You know next-to-nothing
about me.
There is no reason for you to imagine
the rooms I occupied or my heavy hair.

It’s raining, it’s pouring,
And your heart is sad,
But you’re not about to say it.

Perched on this metal tripod
silent as an uninspired sibyl

I watch a living body (male,
white, 56) draped in skyblue

“I feel like such a… shit.
I rescued this little lost terrier
on Broadway and 90th, mangy little thing

The man stands in his boat in his oilskins
On a stream in Rhode Island,
Casting across the pool wedged under his bow

The salesmen, disguised as befuddled policemen, waveringly surrounded the art collector.
They had driven capably all the way from The Hague to East Harlem.
The owners shrewdly viewed their plight with this distorting but comforting disposition:

These mail-ordered tulips,
shockingly gaudy,
open and close, re-open, re-close,

Those were the polio years. The war
Prospered. In Warm Springs Georgia
Strong-armed Sister Kenny

He stayed up late, staved off sleep, wandered, drank,
as if sleep were a kind of devouring,
as if it would masticate and spit him out at dawn