The family coil so twisted, tight and loose anyone trying to leave has to strafe the field burn the premises down

You ask me how I'm going to live the rest of my life Well, nothing is predictable with pain Did the old poets write of this? —in its odd spaces, free, many have sung and battled—But I'm already living the rest of my life not under conditions of my choosingwired into pain rider on the slow train

I refuse to become a seeker for cures.Everything that has ever helped me has come through what alreadylay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong across my heart. This is from wheremy strength comes, even when I miss my strengtheven when it turns on melike a violent master.

My country wedged fast in historystuck in the ice

It's true, these last few years I've lived watching myself in the act of loss—the art of losing, Elizabeth Bishop called it, but for me no art only badly-done exercises acts of the heart forced to question its presumptions in this world its mere excitements acts of the body forced to measure all instincts against pain acts of parting trying to let go without giving up yes Elizabeth a city here a village there a sister, comrade, cat and more no art to this but anger

If to feel is to be unreliable don't listen to us if to be in pain is to be predictable embittered bullying then don't listen to us If we're in danger of mistaking our personal trouble for the pain on the streets don't listen to us

Poetry never stood a chance of standing outside history.

Tongue on your words to taste you thereCouldn’t   read what youhad never written therePlayed your message overfeeling badPlayed your message over it was all I hadTo tell me what and whereforethis is what it said:I’m tired of you asking me whyI’m tired of words like the chatter of birdsGive me a pass, let me just get by

Was it worth while to lay— with infinite exertion—a roof I can't live under? —All those blueprints, closings of gaps,measurings, calculations? A life I didn't choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do. I'm naked, ignorant, a naked man fleeing across the roofs who could with a shade of difference be sitting in the lamplight against the cream wallpaper reading—not with indifference—about a naked man fleeing across the roofs.