Adam and Eve preferred the Tree of Good
and Evil to the fruits of infinity,
says Edward Dahlberg. Gustav Janouch observes

Everything springs from nothing, then is thrust,
face forward, to infinity, declared
Pascal. To get to know the infinite,

What will be the last book
I read? Woolf s finest work,
the only one I shunned?

—Yes, my friend, making my grave rounds. Our mother’s there,
my brother too, and the wife’s niece, buried last year,
   only seventeen, leukemia, it seems. And you, sir?

You spoiled something back there at the beginning,
a vowel, a syllable, a word,
and the poem’s inedible now,

You think me evil? I think so of you.
Before you captured me I was the queen
of Goths, and there I was no lady, but

This quill is a wand;
I wave it about

All is flux.
The wet wars against the dry,
The cold against the hot,

Is there an after-taste of life in these graves? And in the flowers’ mouths do bees find the hint of a word refusing speech?

There stands death, a bluish distillate
in a cup without a saucer. Such a strange
place to find a cup: standing on