I am awake at 5:15 a.m.

When I was young —
but that's another poem.

" We are in a world of facts, and we use them, "
Said Newman: " for there is nothing else to use. "

Wallace Stevens said, " The final belief
Is to believe in a fiction, which you know
To be a fiction, there being nothing else. "

Some dialectic imagination.

And what of Henry James, with his mind so fine
No idea could violate it? What?
And what of James his last three months on earth?
He thought he was in Cork, or aboard a ship.

He even thought he was Napoleon —
The favorite fancy of the cartoon madman.

The distinguished thing, the real beast,
Came at last, and sprang.
It wanted a body.

The words wander, wanting a body, blood.

The planet in the palm spins peacefully.
It might as well be May or February.

Hummingbirds come
With their simultaneous multiplicity
Of wings to the patent feeder hung
Outside the dining-room window.
They are belligerent.

Metabolism is anxiety.
No opus is posthumous. Or else all are.