Where it says snow
read teeth-marks of a virgin
Where it says knife read
you passed through my bones
like a police-whistle
Where it says table read horse
Where it says horse read my migrant’s bundle
Apples are to remain apples
Each time a hat appears
think of Isaac Newton
reading the Old Testament
Remove all periods
They are scars made by words
I couldn’t bring myself to say
Put a finger over each sunrise
it will blind you otherwise
That damn ant is still stirring
Will there be time left to list
all errors to replace
all hands guns owls plates
all cigars ponds woods and reach
that beer-bottle my greatest mistake
the word I allowed to be written
when I should have shouted
her name

You were a “victim of semiromantic anarchism
In its most irrational form.”
I was “ill at ease in an ambiguous world

Deserted by Providence.” We drank gin
And made love in the afternoon. The neighbors’
TV’s were tuned to soap operas.

The unhappy couples spoke little.
There were interminable pauses.
Soft organ music. Someone coughing.

“It’s like Strindberg’s Dream Play,” you said.
“What is?” I asked and got no reply.
I was watching a spider on the ceiling.

It was the kind St. Veronica ate in her martyrdom.
“That woman subsisted on spiders only,”
I told the janitor when he came to fix the faucet.

He wore dirty overalls and a derby hat.
Once he had been an inmate of a notorious state institution.
“I’m no longer Jesus,” he informed us happily.

He believed only in devils now.
“This building is full of them,” he confided.
One could see their horns and tails.

If one caught them in their baths.
“He’s got Dark Ages on his brain,” you said.
“Who does?” I asked and got no reply.

The spider had the beginnings of a web
Over our heads. The world was quiet
Except when one of us took a sip of gin.