Be reticent and elegant,
Twist the opal on your hand,
Turn your pale eyes on me,

“The August heat invades my lady’s chamber:
Italian afternoons, madame, are long,
And life more passionate, and lust less wrong,

My artifice you thought designed
    For another end;
You have your own inventions, and

Love poems (and what have I of yours
But one you did not send for jealousy,
And all my own?)

Bright sunlight! And the summer is a sword
Goading our sense; the very times conspire
With us to pierce that beauty; such a youth

When the dawn is splashed with white like an old man's skull
I set out on my camel, full-blooded and freshly branded.
His ears resemble fronds on the naked palm

In paradise the smell of engine oil
Will undercut the roses. The carburetors
Of Eden will distract the seraphim.

I’ve seen the candles you carried
going out, one by one,
in the darkness of deep woods.

Open yourself up: today
that's no different than opening
a refrigerator door: large chunks

At dawn, from the bedroom window: the elm tree’s shadow
white with frost. Brief, strange sight; when I returned
with coffee for my wife, the lawn was green again.