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The Poet Laureate reads three poems in his New Hampshire home.

Her sly smile was a vicious remnant of her life before Real Life began.

I have tried and failed to renew my vows to real trees whom I love.

The appetite for self-surrender is nothing new in our makeup.

The past is never done with. It begs to be fed, demands to be eaten.

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

I played a game I called ocean, resisted my need for air.

Those trees—each an epoch with its origin and history, rising into night.

If it were fiction, calling the place Newtown would be too much.

I am not prepared for postwar Freetown. Postwar Sierra Leone.

The legendary author Robert Stone, in the words of his friends.

Burly Viking raiders are standing in the coffee line, sharing pickles.

I wear a gray sweater not unlike the one my father used to wear.

The world is where we brace for a joke that’s about to be played on us.

As far as I was concerned you need never have been my father.

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

I was happy I had no one to talk to, to be alone. Happy to be in the hospital.

The child at the rummage sale— more souvenirs than memories.

Nothing was permanent, no friend I made, no math test I took.

John-Michael kept his mouth open until saliva had pooled behind his teeth.

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

I wander among my recollections of the world of letters in London.

Brassy bullets fell against the floral comforter like little candies.

The boys came down out of the woods and crossed toward the dock.

“Werewolf Seized in Southend!” “Man Who Made Love to Pavements!”

“Look in my eyes. Do I look like someone who has heard this story?”

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

Throwing the El Camino into drive, he roared down the mountain road.