A cold winter day spent 
reading, collecting tinder. 
But, my god, the loneliness 
of the hours was overwhelming. 
With age it becomes more and 
more apparent that I need to be 
among people. I have to stop living 
like a monk. Although, it is true, 
monks do live with other monks. 
They pray, take their meals together, 
and perhaps life at the monastery 
is not such a burden. I would never 
have to eat alone in such a place. 
Earlier, I stood eating a can of sardines 
and a piece of unbuttered bread. 
I envied the crows. From the 
kitchen window I had seen them pecking 
at the leftover rice I had thrown out. 
The crows, that had arrived in a group 
and that had left in a group. 
Same as the sardines. 

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries – roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay – how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

How she tears it apart

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair:
a pink rabbit: it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open:
Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
fluid: and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept.
I want now to be close to you. I would
link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days. 

I am not happy. I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate
On what a tragedy his life was, really.

Take my hand. Fist my mind in your hand. What are you now?
When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death:
if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me.
I will be open. I think he never loved me:
he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
he said with a gay mouth: I love you. Grow to know me.

What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a chinese puzzle… yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving… Take my hand. Speak to me.  

Sits beside me and feels bad 
about taking up the space.
Wants desperately to be heard
and does not want to talk.
Rides alongside me everywhere I go, 
occupies a whole seat on the tram,
or sometimes sits in my purse
and wants to be read instead of a book.
Is insistent, is unbearable.
Says, "yes yes but now back to me!"
and it is not kidding.
Blossoms forth when it is least wanted,
racked with sobs in the night when sleep is needed,
is boring holes in the wall
is boring gaps in the conversation 
is boring, boring, boring.
Sees you on the street and bursts into tears.
Cannot shut up for a goddamn second.
needs to be medicated to sleep, to sleep.

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

A kiss can be a bite,
or a touch a scratch,
from caress to crush.
How some pain is good,
is more real. How it says,
Be here now.

The endless ride is quieted for a moment,
the loud rush turns
to sudden flush
blood beads to the surface
and everything else is trivial

Nails dragged across soft skin,
teeth to the jugular,
muscles stretched to snap.
How we can be animals,
instinct-driven. How we listen
to ourselves finally.

And then after, curled around ourselves
like cats, fully self-content,
licking away the memory,
purring, soft.