Flecked on a layer of mortar on the pillbox lid,
the tiles pieced together by some kindred myopic
have caught this much of Tuscany: hills worn down

Now I am flying a land
compressed below me, a realm,
I alight and descend to:
Long Island as it was in the cold

The suddenly bought land
Was stilled in its habits. Indians
Too light-fingered for events

You laugh when I tell you, but it is truth.
Countless physicians have affirmed it, according
to their various specialties. The oral surgeon,

We hiked up a canyon in the cold summer rain.
It was late in the day and on the mountain
across the canyon there was a section of

For the base I prefer a paste of unscented soap, egg white, & glue or gelatin, often peroxide—
never, as do some of my competitors, chewed muslin strips or (loathsome!) bits of animal tissue!
Though receiving but five dollars each night at the lyceum (a dollar at home),

And sleepless once when the needle slipped, he could not
say whether it pierced his hand or was at that moment 
born from it, stitching 

Long ago cloisters had the sacred Truth
of Holy Scripture painted on their walls.
These pictures warmed the hearts of men of faith
and eased the chill inside their stringent cells.

I still recall the little whitewashed lodging where
we lived in peace, just off a major thoroughfare.

Have you felt—I have—a pain that you enjoyed?
Do they say about you, too: “How strange he is!”
—I was dying, and a special agony