The street like a big white bird. Coming home,
After a rainy night in Central Park,
Behind his old friend, his old suffering mare,
A horse-cab driver, looking straight ahead,
Smiles quietly, just because it is morning.
INDEX OF TITLES
After the Party
AIDS Days
American
Americans in Rome
Another Muse
Anyone with the Wish
April
At a Factory in Italy
At Gracie Mansion
At New York Hospital
August
Autumn
Bali
Ballad of La Palette, The
Barbados
Bathroom Door, The
“Beast Is in Chains, The,”
Beautiful Day Outside, A
Beyond the Event Horizon
Big Golconda Diamond, The
Big Jet, The
Bipolar November
Birth of the Universe, The
Black-Eyed Virgins, The
Black Stovepipe Hat
Blood
Blue and Pink
Blue-Eyed Doe, The
Bologna
Boys
Breast Cancer
Broadway Melody
Burkina Faso
Bush Administration, The
Casanova Getting Older
Castle in the Mountains, The
Chartres
Childhood Sunlight, The
Chiquita Gregory
Christmas
Christmas
Climbing Everest
Cloclo
Coalman, The
Coconut
Complete Works of Anton Webern, The
Contents Under Pressure
Cosmopolitans at the Paradise
Dante’s Beatrice
Darkening in the Dark
Das Kapital
Dayley Island
Death
Death of Anton Webern, The
Death of Meta Burden in an Avalanche, The
Death of the Shah, The
Death Valley
December
De Sade
Descent into the Underworld
Dick and Fred
Dido with Dildo
Dimpled Cloud, A
Doctor Love
Downtown
Do You Doha?
Drill, The
Drinking in the Daytime
Drinks at the Carlyle
Dune Road, Southampton
Early Sunday Morning in the Cher
Easter
East Hampton Airport
Edward Witten
Eisenhower Years
Eleven Dimensions, The
Elms
E-mail from an Owl
Empire
Empress Rialto, The
Erato
Eternity
Eurostar
Evening Man
Everything
Faint Galaxy
Fall Snowfall
Fall
February
Feminists in Space
Fever
Fever
Final Hour, The
Finals
Flame
Fog
Forever
Forever
Forever
For Holly Andersen
Former Governor of California, The
France for Boys
Frederick Seidel
Freedom Bombs for Vietnam (1967)
French Polynesia
Fresh Stick of Chewing Gum, A
From a High Floor
From Nijinsky’s Diary
Fucking
Future, The
Galaxies
Gallop to Farewell, A
Getaway
Gethsemane
Girl in the Mirror, The
Glory
God Exploding
Going Fast
Goodness
Grandson Born Dead
Great Depression, The
Green Dress, 1999
Hair in a Net
Hamlet
Hamlet
Happiness
Hart Crane Near the End
Heart Art
Heart Attack, The
Her Song
Holly Andersen
Homage to Cicero
Homage to Pessoa
Home
Hotel Carlyle, New York
Hot Night, Lightning
Hour, The
Hugh Jeremy Chisholm
I Am Siam
I Do
Il Duce
I’m Here This
In a Previous Life
In Cap Ferrat
Infinite, The
In Memoriam
In Spite of Everything
In the Green Mountains
In the Mirror
Into the Emptiness
Invisible Dark Matter
I Own Nothing
Italian Girl, The
Italy
It Is the Morning of the Universe
James Baldwin in Paris
Jane Canfield (1897–1984)
January
Joan of Arc
July
June
June Allyson and Mae West
Kill Poem
Last Entries in Mayakovsky’s Notebook, The
Last Poem in the Book, The
Last Remaining Angel, The
Laudatio
Letter to the Editors of Vogue
Life After Death
Lighting of the Candles, The
Little Song
Little White Dog, The
Lorraine Motel, Memphis
Lover, The
Love Song
March
Marriage
Master Jeweler Joel Rosenthal, The
May
Men and Woman
Miami in the Arctic Circle
Midnight
Milan
Mirror Full of Stars
Mr. Delicious
Mood Indigo
Morphine
Mother Nature
Mu’allaqa
MV Agusta Rally, Cascina Costa, Italy
My Poetry
My Tokyo
Nectar
Negro Judge, A
New Cosmology, The
New Frontier, The
New Woman, The
New Year’s Day, 2004
Night Sky, The
Nigra Sum 1968
Noon
Nothing Will
“Not to Be Born Is Obviously Best of All,”
November
November 24, 1963
October
Ode to Spring
On Being Debonair
One Hundred
On Wings of Song
Opposite of a Dark Dungeon, The
Organized Religion
Our Gods
Ovid, Metamorphoses X
Owl You Heard, The
Pain Management
pH
Pierre Hotel, New York, 1946, The
Poem
Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin
Pol Pot
Portia Dew
Prayer
Pressed Duck
Pretty Girl, A
Puberty
Quantum Mechanics
Racer
Racine
Rackets
Rain in Hell
Recessional
Red Flower, A
Red Guards of Love
Resumption of Nuclear Testing in the South Pacific, The
Rilke
Ritz, Paris, The
Robert Kennedy
Room and the Cloud, The
Row of Federal Houses, A
Royal Palm, The
Scotland
Seal, The
Second Coming, The
September
Serpent, The
Sex
Sickness
, The
“Sii romantico, Seidel, tanto per cambiare,”
Song
Song: “The Swollen River Overthrows Its Banks,”
Song for Cole Porter, A
Sonnet
Soul Mate, The
Special Relativity
Spin
Spring
Spring
Springtime
Stanzas
Star, The
Star Bright
Starlight
Stars
Stars above the Empty Quarter, The
St. Louis, Missouri
Storm, The
Stroke
Summer
Sunlight
Sunrise
Supersymmetry
Take Me to Infinity
Tenth Month, The
Thanksgiving Day
That Fall
The
This New Planetarium
To Die For
To My Friend Anne Hutchinson
To Robert Lowell and Osip Mandelstam
To Start at End
To the Muse
Trip, The
True Story
Twittering Ball, A
Universes
Untitled
Vampire in the Age of AIDS, A
Venus
Venus Wants Jesus
Vermont
Victory
Violin
Walk There, The
Wanting to Live in Harlem
Wanting to Live in Harlem
War of the Worlds, The
We Have Ignition
Weirdly Warm Day in January
What Are Movies For?
What One Must Contend With
White Butterflies
White Tiger, A
Who the Universe Is
Widower, A
Yankee Doodle
Year Abroad, A
Years Have Passed
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
A baby elephant is running along the ledge across
Above the Third World, looking down on a fourth
A can of shaving cream inflates
A cat has caught a mouse and is playing
A coconut can fall and hit you on the head
A daughter loved her father so much
A dog named Spinach died today
A fall will come that’s damp and delicate
A fat girl bows gravely like a samurai
A football spirals through the oyster glow
A gerbil running on an exercise wheel whirs away the hours
Alive. Yes and awake. Flowers
A man comes in from the whirl
A man is masturbating his heart out
A man picks up a telephone to hear his messages
A naked woman my age is a total nightmare
An angel’s on his knees in front of her
And isn’t it
And the angel of the Lord came to Mary and said
And they overwhelm you and force
And when the doctor told me that I could have died
Another muse appeared, but dressed in black
Another perfect hour of emptiness
Antonioni walks in the desert shooting
Anything and everyone is life when two
Anything is better than this
A pink stick of gum unwrapped from the foil
A rapist’s kisses tear the leaves off
A river of milk flows gently down the Howard Street gutter
A row of Federal houses with one missing
A shallow, brutal flood of energy
As he approaches each tree goes on
As he approaches each tree goes on
A slight thinness of the ankles
A stag lifts his nostrils to the morning
A terrorist rides the rails underwater
At night, when she is fast asleep
A twittering ball of birds
A window sighs
A woman waits on a distant star she is traveling to
A woman watches the sunrise in her martini
A young aristocrat and Jew and German
Below the window wine-washed Rome
Blessed is the childhood sunlight
Brought to the surface from the floor of the ocean
But we are someone else. We’re born that way
Caneton à la presse at the now extinct Café Chauveron
City of neutered dogs
Clematis paniculata sweetens one side of Howard Street
Cold drool on his chin, warm drool in his lap, a sigh
Cosmopolitans at the Paradise
Dapper in hats
Dawn. Leni Riefenstahl
Decapitated, he looks much the same
Do they think they are being original when they say
Drinking and incest and endless ease
Each June there is a memorial Mass
East Hampton Airport is my shepherd
Eternal life begins in June
Even her friends don’t like her
Everyone knows that the moon
Fifth Avenue has the flickers, heat
Freddy Dew was Portia’s younger brother
God begins. The universe will soon
God made human beings so dogs would have companions
Great-grandson of George Boole as in Boolean algebra
Gulls spiral high above
Half Japanese, half Jewish
Hart Crane wrote The Bridge—
“Have the bristles at an angle and gently
He discovered he would have to kill
He moves carefully away from the extremely small pieces
Herbert Brownell was the attorney general
Here I am, not a practical man
Her hobby is laughter
Her lighting all the candles late at night
Her name I may or may not have made up
He still reads his paper in there; the john’s what he comes home for
His dick is ticking …
His space suit is his respirator breathing him
Holding his breath, he watched the whole wing flex
How many breasts a woman has depends
How small your part
Hundreds stand strangely
Huntsman indeed is gone from Savile Row
I am presenting
I am pushing the hidden
I attend a concert I can ruin
I brought a stomach flu with me on the train
I can only find words for
I come from
I could only dream, I could never draw
I’d been so seized by passion for this delectable lover
I describe you
I’d had a haircut at Molé
I do
I don’t believe in anything, I do
I don’t believe in anything, I do
I don’t believe in anything, I do
I don’t want to remember the Holocaust
I enter the center
I fly to Paris with the English language
If you’re a woman turning fifty
I get a phone call from my dog who died
I had a question about the universe
I have a dream
I like motorcycles, the city, the telephone
I live a life of laziness and luxury
I look at Broadway in the bitter cold
I look out the window: spring is coming
I’m a liar with a lyre. Kiss me, life!
I’m back at Claridge’s, room
I’m having a certain amount of difficulty
I’m seeing someone and
I’m waiting in my urine specimen in the cup provided
Infinity was one of many
In paradise on earth each angel has to work
Inside the dining room it was snowing
In the middle
Into the emptiness that weighs
Into the emptiness that weighs
I often go to bed with a book
I
once loved
I own nothing. I own a watch
I ride a racer to erase her
I sat in my usual place with my back to the corner, at the precious corner table
I saw the moon in the sky at sunset over a river pink as a ham
I see a first baseman’s mitt identical to mine
I shaved my legs a second time
I spend most of my time not dying
I spend most of my time not dying
Is there intelligent life in the universe?
I stick my heart on a stick
I still lived, and sat there in the sun
Itching from Kotex pads, from green, polluted perch
I think you do
It is
It isn’t every day, but most
It is raining on one side
It is the invisible
It is the morning of the universe
It is time to lose your life
I travel further than
It sang without a sound: music that
I turn from Yeats to sleep, and dream of Robert Kennedy
It used to be called the Mayfair
It was a treatment called
It was summer in West Gloucester
I’ve never been older
I wake because the phone is really ringing
I want to date-rape life. I kiss the cactus spines
I was the only child
I was thinking about dogs
I woke in the middle
Japanese schoolgirls in their school uniforms with their school chaperones
Kitsy and Bitsy and Frisky and Boo
Literally the most expensive hotel in the world
Monsoon is over but it’s raining
More than one woman at a time
Moshi-moshi. (Hello.)
Mother Nature walked from Kenya
My Christmas is covered
My dog is running in his sleep
My face had been sliced off
My last summer on earth
My life
My own poetry I find incomprehensible
My tiny Pitts
Native Americans were still Indians
Never again to wake up in the blond
Noël Coward sweeps into a party late in 1928
None of the Above
Nothing is human or alien at this altitude
Nothing is pure at 36,000 feet either
Now the green leaves of Irish Boston fly or wither
Oh never to be yourself
Older than us, but not by that much, men
One was blacker
Past nine and still snowing
People in their love affairs
Phineas has turned
Phineas is crossing the pont des Arts
Pictures of violins in the Wurlitzer collection
Pictures of violins in the Wurlitzer collection
Razzle-dazzle on the surface, wobbled– Jello-O sunlight
Red
Reginald Fincke was his name
Root canal is talking
Sagaponack swings the Atlantic around its head
Seeing you again
She loves me? She loves me not?
Shirts wear themselves out being worn
Sixty years after, I can see their smiles
Sky-blue eyes
Someone is wagging a finger in her face—Charlotte!
So now you’ve fettered that sweet bride
Suddenly I had to eat
Suddenly the pace
Poems 1959-2009 Page 34