These lectures afford me a great pleasure,
so thank you for coming. My subject is love

Antigone likes walking behind Oedipus
to brake the wind.
As he is blind he often does not agree to this.

Their pupils are sunken synagogues
They huddle around the grave,
beneath sycamore branches

The workers labor in the emptied lot,
          the sweat of summer’s aluminum noon
                    tempering the dry glint of pick and shovel

He is looking at the city from a field,
          the flowers at his back elaborate symbols
                    of some spurned reality:

Red stripes around my ankles, tight
as sisters. We are maybe fourteen, priceless 
with gooseflesh.

Excluding genitalia,
What is a man?
A little boy all grown-up. A reverse neverland.

I lie quiet among my possible suits,
feet to head, feet to head.
Blue, black, white, red.

Slapped by saplings, hampered by roots,
our shovels went like spoons into
mouths that opened wider as we worked.

Close up, much too, ivory’s surface like most
surfaces is nothing smooth. To the touch
in all particulars it’s what the fresh