Rousseau wanted: a cottage on the Swiss shore
a cow, and a rowboat.


Stevens wanted a crate from Ceylon full of jam
and statuettes.


My neighbors are not ashamed of their poverty
but would love to be able to buy a white horse,
a stallion that would transfigure the lot.


Darwin was dying by inches from not having anyone to talk to
about worms, and the vireo outside my window wants nothing less
than a bit of cigarette-wool for her nest.


The unattainable is apparently rising on the tips of forks
the world over …


So-and-so is wearing shoes for the first time


and Emin Pasha, in the deepest acreage of the Congo,
wanted so badly to catch a red mouse! Catch one he did
shortly before he died, cut in the throat by slavers who
wanted to kill him. At last! runs the diary
and it is just this at last we powder up and call progress.


So the boys chipped in and bought Bohr a gram of radium
for his 50th birthday.


Pissarro wanted white frames for his paintings
as early as 1882, and three francs for postage, second place.


Who wants to hear once more the sound of their mother throwing
Brussels sprouts into the tin bowl?


Was it ping or was it ting?


What would you give to smell again the black sweetpeas
choking the chain-link fence?


Because somebody wants your money.


The medallions of monkfish in a champagne sauce …


The long kiss conjured up by your body in a cast …


The paradisiacal vehicle of the sweet-trolley rolling in
as cumulous meringue is piled on your tongue
and your eye eats the amber glaze of crème brûlée …


The forgiveness of sins, a new wife, another passport
the swimming pool, the rice bowl
full of rice, the teenage mutant ninja turtles escaping
as you turn the page …


Oh brazen sex at the barbecue party!


Desire is a principle of selection. Who wanted feet in the first place?


Who wanted to stand up? Who felt like walking?