vi
I loved you. And my love of you (it seems,
it’s only pain) still stabs me through the brain.
The whole thing’s shattered into smithereens.
I tried to shoot myself–using a gun
is not so simple. And the temples: which one,
the right or left? Reflection, not the twitching,
kept me from acting. Jesus, what a mess!
I loved you with such strength, such hopelessness!
May God send you in others–not a chance!
He, capable of many things at once,
won’t–citing parmenides–reinspire
the bloodstream fire, the bone-crushing creeps,
which melt the lead in fillings with desire
to touch–“your hips,” I must delete–your lips.

xiv
Love is more powerful than separation, but
the latter is more lasting. Plus, the greater
the statue, the more palpably it ain’t her.
Her voice, her wits, smell, finally are cut
off. While one blames it on the granite that
you won’t kick up your legs to starry heights, for
your petticoats, one has to punish but

one’s awkward self. It’s not ’cause so much blood
and so much water–eequally blue–
have flowed under the bridge, but since the brass
bed screams at night under a lonely lad,
I’d have erected too, a stone for you,
but I would cut it in transparent glass.