We had been waiting on the porch at evening
in thought. Uneventful winds dropped down
from the green park of rock west of town—

After she pieced together what was done to her,
And he too realized what was done to him,
With reaching hands they feel their fingers

The Empire’s train rolls west from Pressburg’s heights;
I fall from sleep to sleep, dreaming of clearwings,
thousands, flying over father’s meadows,

I followed her gaze past rooftops of tin, fired-clay
and tar, to the lake's far sleights of vision--its gulls
blown sideways and backwards in flight, its islands floating

Aldous Huxley and Thomas Mann by the light
Gold after-light of a California sunset,
Strolled with their wives on a deserted beach

For noble persons, madness seems to have been
A matter of custom--in the old romances.
Alas! I shall be mad, they say, and at once

    Every time the door opens,
the mother bird flies off. What's left
    slumps and pulses. I determine

It is all death, right from the start,
That fluttering agitation in the violins.
Even the love duet, by nightfall

                If you were fired and were free to go
                  From Appalachia to
                  The Apennines, would you

Each time my mind comes back to it, the reasons 
You gave me seem less substantial than before, to advance
Always less promise of an explanation