Nineteen.


A man in Utah hates my work.
Do not disappoint him, Excellence.

She did her best to starve the air by growing fat.

When I am with you, I am two places at once.
When you are with me, you have just arrived
with a suitcase which you pack
with one hand and unpack with the other.

Is it something meaningful or not
that wakens the deep man
from his shallow sleep?

I am thinking of HB and RH and HM and SF
and WB and DJ as I sit reading HV on WS.

Wisdom in a dull man
is like prolonged applause.

He told himself she no longer existed.
When he saw her in the street
he knew he had seen her somewhere,
but could not place himself.

When a poet loves, he loves himself.
When he hates, he hates everybody else.

If I say it, it cannot be.
If I said it, I didn't.

The poet could not speak of himself,
but only of the gradations leading toward him and away.

-- Mark Strand