Here, the water plunges below the cliff-face.
Here, the locomotive purrs in the station.

What does it look like
now? A man, a woman , a roadside diner.

What more is there to know? We speak
in tongues. We live nowhere near the water.

Although stone nudes are everywhere—some crammed
two to a column, supple caryatids,
and others mooning in the Tuileries—

In the dun-colored sky
A cloud even more dun-colored
With the black outline of the sun.

Ah, to be old and rage uncontrollably,
to command the sun and moon to stop
and yet be treated like a dog,

In Bible Class I stared at a colored print
Of Michelangelo's The Last Judgment.
I looked at the swirling bodies drawn up

But suppose, Irina, you find yourself asking:
What is the word for window?
And a voice, your own or someone else's, replies

If I tell a story of America it will be with the needle
splitting Demuth's needle-pocked skin-how his blood blooms
in insulin as he hunches his shoulder to shield the syringe

The café walls are covered with pictures of flying parrots;
I take a table, rest my arms; the table gently tips,
A dozen strangers sit and sit and talk, all they do is lovely,