When as a child
I came to be schooled by the Muses,
one of them took me by the hand,

In my day, we knew how to drown plausibly, 
to renounce the body’s seven claims to buoyancy. In my day, 
our fragrances had agency, our exhausted clocks complained 

          The light that changes
the light that goes out

What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that. The slow beam

Held in the light a story is subdued.
Arranging words in chunks and men in clusters
Prevents the passions from enslaving reason.

Tonight I can’t remember why
everything is permitted or, 
what amounts to the same thing,

Our children do not mean
Their numbers are up, the fireflies
To kill them when they cup

As a child, my hand closed over a centipede,
There was a penny in my mouth

Love brought these readers into the world
The cuplike structures
of their eyes were formed

Driving by it now—walking in Brownsville
is no longer safe—536 remains
the only semi-private house on the block.