As I came out of the New York Public Library
you said your influence on my style would be noticed
and from now on there would be happy poems.
                                  It was at that moment
the street was assaulted by a covey of nuns
going directly toward the physics textbooks.
Tragic fiascos shadowed that whole spring.
The children sang streetfuls, and I thought:
O to be the King in the carol
kissed and at peace; but recalling Costa Brava
the little blossoms in the mimosa tree
and later, the orange cliff, after they sent me out,
I knew there was no peace.
                                  You smiled, saying: Take it easy.

That was the year of the five-day fall of cities.
                 First day, no writers. Second, no telephones.  Third
                 no venereal diseases.  Fourth, no income tax.  And on
                 the fifth, at noon.
The nuns blocked the intersections, reading.
I used to go walking in the triangle of park,
seeing that locked face, the coarse enemy skin,
the eyes with all the virtues of a good child,
but no child was there, even when I thought, Child!
The 4 a.m. cop could never understand. 

You said, not smiling, You are the future for me,
but you were the present and immediate moment
and I am empty-armed without, until to me is given
two lights to carry : my life and the light of my death.

If the wind would rise, those black throbbing umbrellas
fly downstreet, the flapping robes unfolding,
my dream would be over, poisons cannot linger
when the wind rises…

All that year, the classical declaration of war was lacking.
There was a lot of lechery and disorder.
And I am queen on that island.

Well, I said suddenly in the tall and abstract room,
time to wake up.
Now make believe you can help yourself alone.
And there it was, the busy crosstown noontime
crossing, peopled with nuns.
                                   Now, bragging now,
that flatfoot slambang victory,
                                   thanks to a trick of wind
will you see faces blow, and though their bodies
by God’s grace will never blow,
cities shake in the wind, the year’s over,
calendars tear, and their clothes blow. O yes!