Somebody is always expecting you home.
Somebody's saying you've been gone too long
and stayed too late, and no good can come of it.

My eldest son rolls over in his sleep
and, like an actor mid-soliloquy,
he murmurs, “Nothing—”

Your eyes show peace, discord
is foreign to your lips;
most necessary motion

The winds smell of thieves’ markets, of sweetbreads,
of rinds candied with thick syrups of the sun, of trees
glistening like dark men rubbed with oil.

Epigrams, 56

When I began writing I felt like a constellation,
                                some new fixture in the sky,
a lamp with twenty wicks, or at least
                                an eternal flame. It was mostly a lie
I told myself, though a few

Iambi, 203

                                I’m not exactly from poverty, or from obscurity,
but I think it’s okay for me to complain.

                                Some people treat the right, or the ability
to make, or to talk about, poetry

                                as a matter of being born in the right place,
or as some kind of laying on of hands.

You were gravely pulling up his best necktie,
Smoothing down his collar for that calm journey.
He drew off the body. a limp, soiled garment,

Without fear or fault, the green
Expanse of it drops off at acute
Angles, sudden and inconveniently,

Too serious
no longer, we
                have learned to love

Impatient at the ferry slip, he hoped
He'd long be out of Beaufort when they heard
The fool he'd been, the fools he'd made of them,