Amazing to feed misery like this, and so

Selfish: sitting there, in a crowded park,

A book on his lap the ghost of the book

He wishes he’d written. Amazing—

How in all that bright, cheap air he could cut

Again and again with that one

Serrated blade that reddened

As it healed him. The West

Indian woman throwing a sideways faggot

At him, throwing at least what his ear

Shaped into a faggot, was a tooth of it,

As if she could taste,

Could literally smell in his crawling sweat

The name of the man that

Passion ironed him to. But passion doesn’t mean

Intimacy, does it? Never did.

He is so human, this fiend so in need

Of charity that here, finally, is the part you’ve

Waited for: when I lean out

From this page I’m writing on—or up,

Instead, from the book—to kiss him:

Two tongues cradled in a pathetic speech,

Forgiveness.

Remember when I was a boy, and did not yet know

I might have been a blade of the grass I rolled in, itching,