from
Selected Poems
Yearning even in Paradise. Greedy bastards. Probably made
someone in the school pay for it. Villiers Street. Fog on
the Embankment. You were so flawless. Someone always gets
the wrong idea. And so when you discovered hm about what
age were you? Oh I suppose it must have been about twelve years
before I married him. We were living on Station Road.
SONNE
Where do you go when you go away you don't
Really go away do you want to
Dance the tango in France dance
With Valerie by the Seine or
You just need to be alone but you don't
Say so everybody thinks you're sick
In need of something strong well
These things get around
Before the one who has the strongest
Will confront you, mon petit.
She stoops to fire-hydrant
cups hands drinks water
Some withered 3rd Avenue hooker perhaps?
still waiting by Atlas barber-shop
for some stray John?
She speaks:
"I'm illegally parked on your heart
and I'll probably stay here forever"
He speaks: it is a poem * into his jacket
(and then the title of the poem:
COERCION
Under supervision of a gun
I was allowed to go to the bathroom.
NEW AMSTERDAM
How fortunate to be alive for
just this second,
how glorious to be in this light which
will never be the same again,
how beautiful, sad and immaculate,
ein anders -- the middle-aged bicyclist,
(he too is alive!),
the woman who carries her
mewling child piggyback,
the north wind that blows in my face,
even the couple going by
in a boat. They too
can't refrain from taking pictures.
THE SENTENCE
It is as though he were telling us
that this small space
contains the pattern for
all eternity.
LAST
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