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What felt like sanctity now felt like nothingness, like death.

I used to be known for the humor of my music, the lightness of touch.

I wound through the Gothic castle buildings in the university.

The men here don’t know where to place me, call me exotic grail.

Lust for power and money undermined their morality and common sense.

All I know is not in front of me, my sweet angels.

I halt and watch a monk, under plum boughs, sweeping flitting shreds.

Upon his supine monstrous shape there was a colossal inertia.

No one asked that, changed as he was, he do more than survive.

He got people on the conveyor belt that carried them up to heaven.

I sobbed even through hymns sung too gently to lend me cover

It’s difficult to be blessed by Madam Pele. She gives wonderful trouble.

Walking through the snow with her was enough, quiet enough.

I keep waking up on the edge of the black lake. He’s on the other side.

Her previous existence seemed unreal, now, a faint rumor.

She looks in the mirror above the sink, and her image makes eye contact.

Rise the Euphrates, my first novel, grew out of a feverish dream.

I am left with little Rome for error. I choose wrong, then I revise.

Now the scalpel is slippery; how will I know where to make the cuts?

In Astoria, Leo and I find a small church on our way to the river.

Like a bird with a broken wing I will smudge the line of the hopscotch.

A family altar stuffed with dead family hanging now above the TV.

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.

It’s silly, I know, half-expecting to see Apollo playing lyre to a muse.

It seemed that someone had died, but really it was part of us.

Of the sixteen elephants, one—a lady—completely took my heart.

Never takes much, a fingertip’s touch, or beak-brush of prey-probing bird.

Beggars know to emerge when you’ve more than enough to give.