Winter is thick as rock
In the quarry of icy season
And snow squeals underfoot:

Because the houses
are low and driveways
stubby, the sidewalks

Let them be safe as houses, lined up
like people waiting for something to happen.

You are there, I am here and the plagiarists
are in the libraries, where they belong.

I rubbed my eyes. The lightning 
Caught a curving line 
Of tents and lost them. Under 

Here, where the people chiefly are resigned 
To doubting all the words their leaders use 
(Mass-graves that hold forgotten hopes), they find

I was warm on the quadrangle
Warm on the grass by the library steps
Eating my sandwich

Chlorine and languor and vaporous
Threads rising like the steam off soup,
This brackish whirlpool wrinkles us,

My brain had been swiped clean.
I couldn’t love
songs I loved; friends came

Our eyes nearly shut, we hadn’t planned
       To talk of death, when the word
            Itself, like a jolt