Some days you run out and love
every man that you can.
The wind is heard hollering

You’ve left a hole
the size of the sky
in the chair across the table

An envelope under the door.
Feel the strand that bridges it
to the hand of the mailman,

Silver crashed and the lights went out in Ashcroft.
A century passes in a dream.
Some houses stand,

for Nicole Doise

The way to this is. Not easy to find when you know
how it ends, the clutter of was. Hard enough
finding one's own face in the brass

A trick of October light
made festive the trek we
took to the empty beach,

A fallow field in January, crisping
under our boots; the red barn, slanting roof

that slumps and decays; the seed-stitching

It is desirable that as little happen as possible.
An aristocrat said this, knowing (I hope) it was hopeless.
Inevitably,
sporadically (like clockwork,
unlike clockwork), something
goes thlunk into the pond of you,
and the normal expires.

Star of a gnathic nightmare, boasting narrow
snout and jutting lower jaw, scissor
teeth and scaled cheeks

Two old men, father-in-law and son-in-law, Liszt and Wagner, 
    are staying by Canal Grande 
together with the agitate woman who is married to King Midas