Human mothers are right to take such exceptional care of their babies; after all, even from birth, there is no animal which is quite like man. Yes, even as a child, Man differs from the babies of other species. 

There will always be a distance  
Even when things are pressing  
Against one another, so hard 

It was probably Persian and certainly blue—
the bowl with patterned birds on the coffee table.
With a twist of the vacuum hose I broke it in two,

She points to the German twins etched on the handle
of the clippers. “Your moon’s in Gemini,” I murmur.
“Gemini who?” she says, pulling away

You hoarded oyster shells through the R months;
they jut from the backyard garden like unwashed ears
of earth, and listen to your footsteps growing heavier.

The storms that make it into poems most often
leave something like disaster in their wake:
the wine-glass elms in pieces on the lawn,

Though prudes once thought St. Gaudens’s golden-thighed
Diana too exposed to perch above
the old squat pile of Madison Square Garden,

The solitary molar of a streetwalker 
whose body had gone unclaimed 
had a gold filling. 

I  

Things you said in drugstores 
when buying painkillers 
or at your tailor’s 

Never lonelier than in August: 
hour of plenitude—in the country 
the red and golden tassels,