It's a morning of snow and crows storming the bare treetops
As if they invade the eves of a burned-out cathedral.
Where are the children? A ludicrous posture of mourning

Look at you, cutting and weeping. Idiot.

Fist to fist with tulips, glads, selving and unselving
daffodils, they work their metamorphoses in loam

      They are far from shore.
Foam-glittering , they rise from the waves
      in a pure fountain

Softness belongs to life. 
Tell me your forbidden thoughts 
and we will breathe together.

In Belgium on his day, servant girls knew
to stay away from the fields, because
he gave the cabbages large heads

I remember when this harbor was filled with ships!
White-winged fireboats and barges and fat tugs

In your body the alcohol poured
or your eyes broke apart
quiet poems they saw.

It's never love that brings my name to mind,
but squalor—awful word. A term tossed off

When she would decompose the shrubbery
Leave the trees alone or lose herself around pools