Sixty Poems Book

Contents

From Unending Blues, 1986

Toward Nightfall   3

Against Whatever It Is That’s Encroaching   6

From The Book of Gods and Devils, 1990

St. Thomas Aquinas   9

Factory   11

Shelley   12

The Devils   15

The White Room   17

The Big War   19

Paradise   20

In the Library   21

From Hotel Insomnia, 1992

The Prodigal   25

Hotel Insomnia   26

The Tiger   27

A Book Full of Pictures   29

Evening Walk   30

Romantic Sonnet   31

The Old World   32

Country Fair   33

From A Wedding in Hell, 1994

Paradise Motel   37

The Clocks of the Dead   38

Leaves   39

Transport   40

Crazy About Her Shrimp   41

Reading History   42

Empires   44

Mystics   45

Via del Tritone   46

The Secret   47

From Walking the Black Cat, 1996

Mirrors at 4 a.m.   51

Cameo Appearance   52

What the Gypsies Told My Grandmother While She Was Still a Young Girl   53

Little Unwritten Book   54

Slaughterhouse Flies   55

An Address with Exclamation Points   56

Entertaining the Canary   57

Ghosts   58

At the Cookout   60

Club Midnight   62

Pastoral Harpsichord   63

Have You Met Miss Jones?   64

From Jackstraws, 1999

The Soul Has Many Brides   69

Mummy’s Curse   70

The Common Insects of North America   71

The Toy   72

From Night Picnic, 2001

Unmade Beds   79

The One to Worry About   80

Sunday Papers   81

The Altar   82

My Father Attributed Immortality to Waiters   83

The Lives of the Alchemists   84

From The Voice at 3:00 a.m., 2003

Grayheaded Schoolchildren   87

Serving Time   88

Late September   89

From My Noiseless Entourage, 2005

Self-Portrait in Bed   93

To Dreams   94

My Noiseless Entourage   95

Description of a Lost Thing   96

My Turn to Confess   97

In the Planetarium   98

Pigeons at Dawn   99