Never or, will to it, or nerve throw past most
over soon after, and grasp again offensive

At your center: 
spectacles to sharpen sight,
wake of two white birds’ liftoff,

It’s that feeling again:
pinecone going
wristbone, phone, eye

Cups and swords the prophet fed from, led with,
and an inlaid box with a hair from his holy beard,
all wrought with gold and strewn with jewels like fistfuls

Sitting down, unfolding
the paper, without looking
you raise the light toward the pipe.

tonight I was reminded of our house in England,
the little record player that always skipped.
Our dozen records seemed such a luxury, although

would you mind very much if I came home with you?
Yes, mother, we’ll go home now.

But in a poem we can do anything we want.
Look how easy it is to add on rooms, to multiply

The light of the moment becoming a memory—
that was their subject: as if the present
could be haunted by its own nostalgia.