And if I tried to give you something else, something outside myself, you would not know that the worst of anyone can be, finally, an accident of hope

If I could blame it on all the mothers and fathers of the world, they of the lessons, the pellets of power, they of the love surrounding you like batter ... Blame it on God perhaps? He of the first opening that pushed us all into our first mistakes? No, I'll blame it on Man For Man is God and man is eating the earth up like a candy bar and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean for it is known he will gulp it all down. The stars (possibly) are safe. At least for the moment. The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.

Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly.

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious

In a dream you are never eighty.

Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.

The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat.