The first speaker said

Fingertips pointing the opposites,Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ballOr a kid skipping rope, come on, come on,Running a scattering of steps sidewise,How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,He’s only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate—now!

He thought of Virgil, Virgil who wasn’t there to chat with.History he never forgave for letting Latinlapse into Italian, a renegade jabberingmusical enough but not enough to call musicSo he conversed with stones, imperial and papal.Even the preposterous popes he could condonea moment for the clean arrogance of their inscriptions.He asked the Italians only to…

Indoors the constant fire, the careful thriftAre facts that I accept and understand.I have brought in red berries and green boughs-Berries of black alder, boughs of pine.They and the sunlight on them, both are mine.I need no florist flowers in my house.Having lived here the years that are my best,I call it home. I am…

Are vegetable hearts) were worn on sleeves,The squash’s are. In green the squash vine gushes.The flowers are cornucopias of summer,Briefly exuberant and cheaply golden.And if they make a show of being hidden,Are open promiscuously to every comer.Let the squash be what it was doomed to beBy the old Gardener with the shrewd green thumb.Let it…

Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.A glass spun for itself is empty,Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.Embossed glass hides the poem of its absence.Words should be looked through, should be windows.The best word were invisible.The poem is the thing the poet thinks.If the impossible were not,And if the glass, only the glass,Could be…

Searock he built, not ivory.Searock as well his haunted artWho gave to plunging hawks his hearts.2He loved to stand upon his headTo demonstrate he was not dead.Ah, if his poems misbehave‘Tis only to defy the grave.3This exquisite patrician birdGrooming a neatly folded wingGuarded for years the Sacred Word.A while he sang then ceased to sing.4His…