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)

A man told me once that all the bad people Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails You need; they are really claws, and we know Claws. The sharks--what about them? They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men In black coats who chase you for hours In dreams--that's the only way to get you To the shore. Sometimes those hard women Who abandon you get you to say, "You." A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It doesn't move on its own. It takes sometimes A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving. Then they blow across three or four States. This man told me that things work together. Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas; And a careless God--who refuses to let you Eat from the Tree of Knowledge--can lead To books, and eventually to us. We write Poems with lies in them, but they help a little.

AUTUMN 1970. Edmund falls in love with Clare, a classmate, and believes his love is returned. He is the envy of all his friends, but on Christmas Eve a stranger, Cole, arrives at the Oak Pub and seduces Clare....

XIII

... so I called and signalled but she didn't hear, or look, in fact; she had hold of three glasses and backed into the crowd. "You got them, Clare?"

I heard myself cry out in a boy's voice, as if her name were slipping. I would wait God only knows how long for any service

now it was near eleven. In my seat was Clare when I got back, and on her stool the NAVY man who had arrived that night,

who wore all dark and wasn't from our school, who lit his cigarette and was engaged in deep talk with another listening girl,

I noticed, on his other side. I reached our table and knelt down alongside Clare, the other side from him. Gently I touched

her hand and she looked down. She said, "He's here, he's coming through the rye," and carried on, quarreling with Nick about some war

he said was not "true war." The NAVY man was scrutinizing him. The atmosphere was purest smoke through which I led my hand

towards her thigh, gold-coloured and so near, and let it rest and have her move away as if earth had itself marooned me here

by quickening. The stranger had his say about all kinds of things I couldn't follow, and "Time!" was called to a great choral cry

of disappointment. "Christmas Day tomorrow," a girl proclaimed unsteadily. The whole gang was round our table. "To the Mallow!"

Stan was shouting. "To the Protest Wall!" Now everyone was out in the yellow mist and clapping in the chill. "His name is Cole,"

Clare quietly was telling me. "It is?" I wondered. "Whose is Cole?" "My heart's delight, obviously." I looked her in the eyes,

but clashed with shields and stood back in the night. "Now don't forget," said Clare, "it's still our plan. Don't think you aren't still in my care, all right?"

Her lips were open, she had silky skin, her breaths were cherry-flavouring the air, and each was marvellous and none was mine:

and every step I took away from there put off a light, until the night was bare.