I can’t imagine your not existing; but on the other hand
I could have lived and died without knowing you at all.
What Mayans you had in you! what stinging Aztecs!

I needed to find you and, once having found you, to keep you
You who could make me a physical Larousse
Of everyday living, you who would present me to Gilberte

You separated my hometown from Kentucky
And south of us you deftly touched Indiana. Ohioans drove back over you

Julie, there was the time
You went on the De Grasse with E.E. Coulihan
Unknowing. He, a student, and you, met

First came the age of gold, then silver, steel,
papier-mâché—and now glass: the transparent

briefcase I bought in Rome so you can see

This afternoon I met my woe,
   a formless sound.
I couldn't figure out her sex.

The Wish Department

Today I sight-read the last 
Schubert sonata: he wanders between keys: evasive

Two gallons of apple cider.
A jar of pungent, pasty Yankee mustard.
“Two dollars please.” Boys on bikes

Up-and-down shafts of light brick
Lift occupants up into prisms or roofs
Of green copper, and then embark on the sky.

Because we thought we had to know everything
About each other, only did already
Without realizing it, a sense of false