When I enter hell, almost out of habit
I’ll shout Aspasia! at the first ghost who smiles.

The ghost of him presiding
over those last, lost afternoons

Tired already or just confused?

        —Are you an Ex-is-ten-tial-ist,
Mr. Mister?

Sandals are the youth of a shoe
And the memory of its trek to the desert.

All the crumbling things
Are on their way to becoming one again

The pressures of my life bring together my birth day
And my death day, like history books.

Give me your body I shall never know to the end,
Give me the vessel, not the wine.

Each of you who writes reports illness, pain from love
      spilt

  Imagine our nation is a giant boy,
down on his knees in a giant kitchen—
trucks and trains and stupendous armies
marching across the mop-clean floor.