“I don't really think it will make much difference to me when I'm dead whether I'm read or not . . . just as whether I'm dead or not won't mean much to me when I'm dead.”

A man has died, but in his casket, in his skull’s gray dungeon—the world’s tiniest theater, his last thought remains. Down in the ghetto of the dead, the terminal second of an existence otherwise unimportant is kept in perpetuity.

You sit at the head of the table
heady with wine,
and hold forth,

In the seething almost Indian heat
of an exaggerated July in the city
the remaining inhabitants cautiously

Oh really, she’s with somebody?
So she’s with somebody.
Is she really with somebody?

When, thanks to the virtues of wine,
I let go of solid memory and a certain pleasure
seems almost real to me

I am writing from a place you have never been,
Where the trains don’t run, and planes
Don’t land, a place to the west,

The dew drops from the white magnolia tree, same as the last year.
She will stand by the window, calmer than in winter.
Caught by the scent of spring, she will bring stolen branches