Bellowing
skull heavy with brains
of pale prunes,

Ailing, alien, alone,
are you ill in your ear or in error?

I’m still here (Ithaca)
the students are back

When I think of all the Annes
in my life they’re all you almost

I shall defeat death
not the old-fashioned way

I can see this poem is intent on being Catholic
though it started out agnostic

His letters say nothing of the sky, only the long burn
of hydrogen, felicity, the vertigo of momentary disbelief.

I went with him. Paris who was not Paris
but a bright and rising constellation

I remember when this harbor was filled with ships!
White-winged fireboats and barges and fat tugs

It's never love that brings my name to mind,
but squalor—awful word. A term tossed off