She waits behind the bolted door,
Her withered face in thirty pieces,
While blood runs thin, and memory,
An idiot without a name,
Recalls the snows of eighty years,
The daughter whose death was unexplained,
Darkness, blue veins, and broken leases.
Grandmother waits behind the door
(Sight dims beyond the curtain folds)
With her toothless smile and enuresis.
Over the river and through the woods
To grandmother’s house we go …
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Your ego’s bad dream drums that vision
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Not a third that walks beside me,
Whether at dusk or daybreakOr at blinding noon, a retinueOf shadows that no doorExcludes.–One like a kind of scrawl,Hands scrawled trembling and blue,A harelipped and hunchbacked dwarfWith a smile like a grapefruit rind,Who jabbers the way I doWhen the brain is empty and tiredAnd the guests no longer care:A clown, who shudders and suddenlyIs a…
Then walk the floor, or twist upon your bed
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Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read
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Butcher the evil millionaire, peasant,
Torture the chancellor. Leave the ambassadorStrung by his thumbs from the pleasantEmbassy wall, where the vines were.Then drill your hogs and sons for another war.Fire on the screaming crowd, ambassador,Sick chancellor, brave millionaire,And name them by the name that is your name.Give privilege to the wound, and maimThe last resister. Poison the airAnd mew for…
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