Is that what he's saying? You can't be sure—
And this isn't the usual stance of prayer;
Still, it's what I hear as I look at him—

It was foolish planning to arrive at noon 
But, in retrospect, it doesn’t really matter. 
There was a bar, after all, where we bought water 

You’re an eight-year-old
lying naked
on the floor of your grandfather’s room,

Those two beautiful Lvovians
my father and your mother
what would have happened

Crater of the beginning, mud of death,
endless wreckage,
is this your world,
the serpent you forged
over seven long nights?

Sudden September thunderstorm
then long wearisome rains;
still on the beach the fresh
rush of waves;

And suddenly in the street on parade
the exhausted elephants
and monkeys, biggest of buffoons, dwarfs
falsely cheerful, the trapeze artist
who made me want to weep,

So much for the fighting
                                                 and the sex

The facts sit in an ordinary room. They resemble people:
stubborn and without imagination.

Eight Rants

The Fatso

Venus is rising. She's muttering,
A sober chick is a sullen trick.