Arcades brick dust a rose lamp burns in the upstairs window
everything I will say I have said already         still again the
arcades the dust the light to be built by the bottle the box

The octopus is dead
who lived in Wylies Baths

No, I'm not the Austrian—you're confusing me
with Dora—the one who deserted Freud
before he had his chance to perfect her.

All me are standing on feed. The sky is shining.

All me have just been milked. Teats all tingling still
from that dry toothless sucking by the chilly mouths

I glory centennially slow-
ly in being Guugumbakh the
strangular fig bird-born to overgrow
the depths of this wasp-leafed stinging-tree,

One sunny afternoon on Morningside Heights
From the window-seat of the Crosstown bus,
I gaze up momentarily between chuckles
Amid Jean Paul’s tendril-flower of allusions

Waiting on the stairs of The Mizpah Missionary Home on
Summit Avenue, the children of apostles played with
neighborhood kids and sometimes spread the gospel, warming

We all have seen it.
In the slide show he gives each summer.
There he is! (or There you are!) someone will say

A deer!—nibbling on the few green things
that grow in my strawy meadow.
Mine, we say here: my studio, my meadow, my road.

 Whatever the great religions offer
it is afterlife their people want:
Heaven, Paradise, higher reincarnations,