At one time, under this same title,
I told the whole story of the kidnapped girl
and her Mexican tortures.

She cannot get it to her mouth fast enough. She cannot
   stop herself.
What rush correspondence of blood replenishes dangerous

Where did you think you were going with that gun?
Indebted and intended to wake you up, les amantes, I’ll
pull your trigger first when you least expect

I never kept sheep,
But it’s as if I had.
My soul is like a shepherd,
It knows the wind and the sun
And walks hand in hand with the Seasons,
Following and looking.
All the peace of peopleless Nature
Comes to sit by my side.
But I feel as sad as a sunset is
To our imagination,
When we see it fading in the distance
And feel the night enter
Like a butterfly through the open window.

It’s night. The night is very dark. In a house a long way off
Shines the light from a window.
I see it, and I feel human from head to toe.
It’s odd that the whole life of the person who lives there, and who I don’t know,
Draws me in simply because of that distant light.
His life is doubtless real, and he has a face, gestures, family, and profession.
Now, though, all that matters to me is the light in his window.

Grubby, unknown child playing at my door,
I don’t ask if you bring me a message full of symbols.
I’m drawn to you because I’ve never seen you before,
And, of course, if you were clean, you’d be a different child,
You wouldn’t even come here.
Play in the dust, go on, play!

He found old age awaiting him 
                on a spare and limpid plain
         between Troy’s embers and the mines’

Not your ordinary ice cream, though the glaze
of these skeletal figures affects
the disposition of those grinning candies

Yes. I have seen the end, and yes,
I was disturbed by what I saw.
That I yet glimpse occasional

—like Venice, save
that the canals are scarlet, and decay
impossible, neither are the boats