I can’t write a damned thing, which was all I wanted to do.
   And all I wanted to do was write something that you could
understand.

I wish I lay in your arms only, yours alone with you alone with me, my lovely ghost whose body I have never seen.

On the sill
the blown-out candle

I have been allowed to go on living in this
room. I am not asked to explain my presence
anywhere.

One after another the angel of history
Women: rural, 9, 1536, 1547, 1550, the angel of history
1551—52, 1559; in business, 147; and the angel of history

Inaudible consonant inaudible vowel
The word continues to fall
                                      in splendor around us

Outside the leaves are quiet
as their shadows. Hidden
in the leaves a bird is waiting

One evening beside the river, only its name. Only one river, the Ohio, that is the loneliest river in the world.

Brooming the streets, sick drunk he hated life.
Winter after winter, his whining wife
Forgave him about midnight, and then she prayed,