At the desk loaded with books, a blind computer A gifted apple, a decaying swallow tail butterfly A photograph of a woman, standing behind A rain beaten glass, eyes closed to that dripping sound.

On Good Friday, two millennia after the celebrated passing, The clocks still continuing in their sequential crucifixion of seconds, Never stopping to pick up falling tears and never rising up The submerging memory, which continues to sink and recede

I pray in thanks, for a quarter century of existence, which was often alive An unhardened heart in spite of two lapsed loves, an unasked gift of words And friends, for spring renewing life from bare bark and thawed ground And songs that fill my bamboo soul like God’s flowers.

You want a social life, with friends. A passionate love life and as well To work hard every day. What's true Is of these three you may have two And two can pay you dividends But never may have three.

There isn't time enough, my friends-- Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends-- To find the time to have love, work, and friends. Michelangelo had feeling For Vittoria and the Ceiling But did he go to parties at day's end?

Homer nightly went to banquets Wrote all day but had no lockets Bright with pictures of his Girl. I know one who loves and parties And has done so since his thirties But writes hardly anything at all.

The bed of the railway links me to these days of hell. The bed of the railway just one night can do it all.

Love of the others you wear me out with great strokes of a stiff brush.

In a station of Paris is there a true love that smiles? In a station of Paris everything begins and everything fails.

Love of the others you suck the young blood of my life.

And the words of my big brother I still hear them on my cot. And the words of my big brother can it be he forgot?

Love of the others you are slow to promise a reward

So be it my child some people are never satisfied So be it my child some win some fall by the wayside

Love of the others you put out my eyes by dint of fevers.

Goodbye is a big handkerchief a big handkerchief of paper That you throw in the sewer once it's been spoiled with tears

Love of the others you leave in my mouth a taste of clay.

(Translated by John Ashbery)