The piano remained in the hall, like an obelisk,
as if to haunt the place we had to leave;

They carried the lamps out as if they were children.

I envy the violinist, the trainer of a mahogany bird
perched on his shoulder.

The train swayed past cropped fields,
Barking collies, abandoned gas works, cows.
Brown bungalows with little gardens

What will be the last book
I read? Woolf s finest work,
the only one I shunned?

Could you not look after me another day?
Why did you go alone? I leave in only another day.

If your gravestone is not erased first my head will be.

The first time I met Wittgenstein, I was
late. “The traffic was murder,” I explained.
He spent the next forty-five minutes

The first poem came at an iron glass-topped table
about the space heater near my feet how my ears fuzzed
from its warmth and maybe something else its coils

I can hear him not wanting to die with fiberoptic
clarity. The gun in his lap has other
thoughts but won't get on the phone. This

Have you ever dreamed you had sex with someone
   you aren't remotely interested in,
like a guy you work with or one of your husband's friends,