Is it the dust and the iron railings and the blank red brick
That makes me sick? 
There is no space to be lonely any more
And crumbling feet on a city street
Sound past the door.

TO A SICK CHILD

At the end of the day
The sun rusts. 
The street is old and quiet. 
The houses are of iron. 
The shadows are iron. 
Shrill screams of children scrape the iron sky. 
Let us lock ourselves in the light. 
Let the sun nail us to the hot earth with his spikes of fire,
And perhaps when the darkness rushes past
It will forget us.

LOVE SONG

(To C. K. S.)

Little father,
Little mother,
Little sister,
Little brother,
Little lover,
How can I go on living
With you away from me?

How can I get up in the morning
And go to bed at night,
And you not here? 
How can I bear the sunrise and the sunset,
And the moonrise and the moonset,
And the flowers in the garden?

How can I bear them,
You,
My little father,
Little mother,
Little sister,
Little brother,
Little lover?

QUARREL

Abruptly, from a wall of clear cold silence
Like an icy glass,
Myself looked out at me
And would not let me pass. 
I wanted to reach you
Before it was too late;
But my frozen image barred the way
With vacant hate.

MY CHILD

Tentacles thrust imperceptibly into the future
Helplessly sense the fire. 
A serpentine nerve
Impelled to lengthen itself generation after generation
Pierces the labyrinth of flames
To rose-colored extinction.

THE TUNNEL

I

I have made you a child in the womb,
Holding you in sweet and final darkness. 
All day as I walk out
I carry you about. 
I guard you close in secret where
Cold eyed people cannot stare. 
I am melted in the warm dear fire,
Lover and mother in the same desire. 
Yet I am afraid of your eyes
And their possible surprise. 
Would you be angry if I let you know
That I carried you so?

II

I could kiss you to death
Hoping that, your protest obliterated,
You would be
Utterly me. 
Yet I know—­how well!—­
Like a shell,
Hollow and echoing,
Death would be,
With a roar of the past
Like the roar of the sea. 
And what is lifeless I cannot kill! 
So you would make death work your will.

III