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

Saturday. Early afternoon. High
Spring light through new green,
                                                    a language, it seems, I have forgotten,

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.