crooked as corkscrews

Weaknesses:
You had none.
I had one:
I loved.

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.

You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.

Then they stay dead.

I walked across the park to the fever monument.
It was in the center of a glass square surrounded
by red flowers and fountains. The monument
was in the shape of a sea horse and the plaque read
We got hot and died.

We are like roses that have never bothered to
bloom when we should have bloomed and
it is as if
the sun has become disgusted with
waiting

She said, I love you.
He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

At night,
with my wife
sitting on the bed,
I turn from her
to unbuckle
my belt
so she wonʼt see
her father
unbuckling
his belt

Even if I now saw you
Only once,
I would long for you
Through worlds,
Worlds.

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
Thatʼs all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.