You lived here once. City—remember?—
of formerly your own, of the forever beloved,
of the dead,

“For a few years, I managed to eke out
       a meagre living as The Human Yo-Yo.”
But I tired of the unnatural activity,

Naturally, the preference is for
victory, not persistence
which, like fire if not put out,

                If done steadily, and with the kind of patience that belies all fear, 
it is indeed possible to walk the plank backward from the doom 
of vanishing

After a long night swimming
In the dry dark of a book
I heard outside my window 

She asserts herself at the damnedest times—
when they’re working out at the gym, say,
or having a brandy and cigar with the boys.

The miracle began with a miracle.
I was sitting in my gold-trimmed chariot
(well, not exactly my chariot—like all

A cup before coffee, a shell
  after the scrambled egg,
I am a big nothing

This hill and the old house on it
are all we have. Two acres,
more or less—half crabby lawn,

And, after the explosion, made spheres sing,
A pure expression of pure poetry,
Like rising rain or a nation with no