two rich poets
going over the past a little,
changing a thing or two

Let me please look into my window on 103rd Street
    one more time—
without crying, without tearing the satin, without touching

I think he is full of some low form of love,
something that Dante would have pitied

I had just read Pound again and I was thinking
of his brain floating by me in the universe

Nobody else alive knows the four heart sounds
and nobody touches the four soft places
and raises his wing to look for lice; and nobody

This is how I saved one animal’s life,
I raised the lid of the stove and lifted the hook
that delicately held the cheese—I think it was bacon—

Richard Strauss, my hero, here you are
finally letting go of both sword and breast,
and there you are escaping from our bleeding world

How good it is to lie there
waiting for love;
fighting the fire,

I could love the pine tree,
and the road going back and forth like a blue thread,

Come with me to Stanley’s and spend your life
weeping in the small park on 106th Street.