Crimson curtains round my mother's bed,
Silken soft as may be;
Cool white curtains round about my bed,
For I am but a baby.

Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold,
Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire.
(A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)

The Samian virgins us'd often to play
With Crethis the witty, the pleasant and gay,
But now, when they seek her, she cannot be found,
Their sportive companion sleeps here under ground,
Discharging the debt which to nature we owe;
For all must descend to the regions below.

I hate political poems. Not for me,
the human wad that clogs the great high way.
A love that's everyone's business? Forget it. A drink
from the common trough? No, thanks. The public: yuck.

We are all creatures of flame. The butterfly: the intensity of a short life and fragility become color. My death is like shadow, my life aquiver, a pulse in the light; I am so close to death it makes me proud, cruel and demonic.
Unmoved, I flutter from Helen's lips to Adonis' wound. I love my death, the flame, more than anything.

We are alone in the dark. You up there have lips, rolled-up leaves, hands entwined with rosy blood and bluish veins, we are alone and cannot touch. We live our life fully, our fate is to resist the waves, that is what we become, and triumph and pain color us as the reflection of fall and of the sun colors the waves there near the surfa

God dreamed-the suns sprang flaming into place,
And sailing worlds with many a venturous race!
He woke-His smile alone illumined space.

Cowboy balladier
Memories rising like smoke
Sad songs, fire and stars

Carelessly over the plain away,
Where by the boldest man no path
Cut before thee thou canst discern,
Make for thyself a path!

Silence, loved one, my heart!
Cracking, let it not break!
Breaking, break not with thee!

In my body you search the mountain
for the sun buried in its forest.
In your body I search for the boat
adrift in the middle of the night.