sometimes his arm inside her up to his shoulder.

She to whom he was guardian.

And I thought about his father, who, as a child,

would hide in the woods with the cow, when the Gentiles came killing.

Spotted Aria

And then, in full, overcast, noon

light, in the old, enamel, oblong

second-floor tub, at the window—like a bathtub

high in a tree, the honey locust

just outside—I see myself,

spotted as a salamander, an

albino newt speckled with golden

oval spots (which were circles before I got

fat), and childhood freckles and specks

of cardamom, and flicks of vanilla bean and

tiny raspberry moles, and flat

scarlet petechiae. I try to

find my various markings pretty,

my stipple which would serve a sea-turtle chick

crossing a beach of chiplets of crabshell and

dark grains of trilobite cast,

and salt and pepper cranberry skin

left over from a picnic feast, and

Rhode-Island-Red down, and sunset

sand-blooming cereus.

The longer the quarantine lasts, the more I under-

stand that ancient desert one—

no wife, no husband, no lover, no child,

no friend, no equal—

who said, I am that I am. Alone,

crabby—in fact, furious—

and yet I am also the far older

god who said, I am not what I seem.

I am bathing, in clear light, this May

day, her luscious body.

When I Looked Out

my window, again, Childe

Harold of the Bright Tower—child of the

Twins—seemed to be doing a head-to-toe

shimmy. I looked in the mirror, and two

quarters of my face were missing—

from 6 to 9, and from 12 to 3,

replaced by a flag with a black-and-white

checkerboard pattern, rippling. Some of the

squares were narrowed by the faffling, some

splayed, and the whole board tilted, like slanted handwriting.

The day before, I was rubbing my half-numb

soles, and I prayed, Let me keep

my feet. On the way to the eye doctor,

there were seven lilies in the gutter. In the subway,

a woman screamed when she saw me—I love

your hair! Is it a wig? I’m bipolar, I’m harmless!

Me too, I said, holding my gray and

white cartoon braids out from my head.

He has birds in there! Alive! She pointed to a

towel next to a seated man,

who was petting a flicker.

From birth I was a storyteller,

and a liar, addicted to narratives.

The doctor said, That was an ophthalmic migraine,

your eyes are perfect. I kept saying, Thank you,

wanting to say, Thank you for your trouble,

I’m sorry for your loss. I hate to incon-

venience anyone—except

my mother and father, whose false good names

I have ruined. I moved to New York City

for its thousands of windows lit in the dark, the

happy families I was constellating.

But after I hauled my parents’ names through

small Klieg lights like white mud—

in my 78th year, my eyes opened

a little wider to the suffering of others.

A Song Near the End of the World