Late in this cruel season when the sun
scourges alike the city and the fields,
parching the stubble and sinking into slums

Stupidity, delusion, selfishness and lust
torment our bodies and possess our minds,
and we sustain our affable remorse

Dreams come now, bad dreams, and teenage boys
burrow into their pillows. Now the lamp
that glowed at midnight seems, like a bloodshot eye,

I prize the memory of naked ages when
Apollo relished gilding marble limbs
whose agile-fleshed originals achieved

You used to be jealous of our old nurse
who sleeps, warm heart and all, beneath the sod.
We ought to bring her flowers, even so.

Call it windfall

finding your calculation

come, finally,

Two events have a spacelike separation.
Show that a frame can be found in which
the two events occur at the same time.

Some are drunk. Some are mumbling.
Many are solitary, each in his way fixed.
They are all happy over their very good number,

My mother confuses Topeka with Toledo.
My father confuses me with my mother.
Spain didn’t conquer Kansas,

The windows around Gramercy have eyes.
We look, they look back.
A brook cut through the swamp.