Poems

Bus Stop Lights are burning In quiet rooms Where lives go on Resembling ours. The quiet lives That follow us— These lives we lead But do […]

In Bertram’s Garden Jane looks down at her organdy skirt As if it somehow were the thing disgraced, For being there, on the floor, in the […]

Love’s Strategems But these maneuverings to avoid The touching of hands, These shifts to keep the eyes employed On objects more or less neutral (As honor, […]

Men at Forty Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to

Men at Thirty Thirty today, I saw The trees flare briefly like The candles upon a cake As the sun went down the sky, A momentary […]

Ode to a Dressmaker’s Dummy Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included. — Sears, Roebuck Catalogue O my coy darling, still You wear […]

On The Death Of Friends In Childhood We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell; If anywhere, […]

Pantoum Of The Great Depression Our lives avoided tragedy Simply by going on and on, Without end and with little apparent meaning. Oh, there were storms […]

Poem This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have […]

Sadness 1 Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents, Why were you so sad on porches, whispering? What great melancholies were loosed among our swings! […]