Teeth-marks intact.
She tied a red ribbon
Halfway between

Very peaceful, except,
There’s a faint moan

bent as I was
intently
over the particular.

On a morning otherwise sunless,
Strolling arm in arm
Past some gallows-shaped trees

Our life stories are scary and droll,
Like masks children wear on Halloween
As they go from door to door

Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse.

When the National Library burned for three days in August,
the town was choked with snow. Those days I could not find
a single pencil in the house, and even when I grabbed one

We were inmates of an orphanage in Kraków;
A prison in Panama;
A school for the blind in Genoa.

O light, unsayable in your splendor.
A lot of good you did to me.

Bald man smoking in bed,
Naked lightbulb over his head,
The shadow of his cigar