Oie Cythaera
Land out of which I might never have
Limped into this day which holds me now

An eye for an eye, love
A mouth for a mouth
Next me lie, love

The old woman who sees him sleeps in that house
By his boots she knows him, his long white coat

The bright young bones growing turn like green tendrils

Where there’s no quarrel, but there’s fate
A scream unhurried of music’s choice

But men married in New York or else women
Dominate the pavement from where they stand,

Had the king of Uruk never wrestled Enkidu,
the wild man of the steppe, and just barely defeated him
on points, he never would have fallen in love with him

Shall I give up on salvation
And suppose the unit of life isn’t the self.
As I always assumed, but the twenty houses

And where begins our not-quite-romance? An ill summer
passed without the hummed comfort of air-conditioning.
Heat scumbled into the corners of Cambridge: ivory our suburb

Even the few here who regard themselves as aliens
Declare with their window boxes that they' re not ungrateful
For the happenstance of being alive,