Even without wars, life is dangerous.

But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build. Twice I have so simply declared myself, have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy, have taken on his craft, his magic.

O starry night, This is how I want to die

Rejoice with the day lily for it is born for a day to live by the mailbox and glorify the roadside

I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is.

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.

Somebody who should have been born is gone.