I thought I'd start with a few poems
from the book L'Epervier did back in '77 I guess it is.
This is a poem entitled "Contagion."
"I'm going to yield up my life to you, across, say,
the colors you eat--
mauve, sienna.
I'm going to take this list back into me, inside me
because I never made it.
If I send the money home, my sister resents me.
If I send the portrait after you,
the yellow cools, the white stone opens out into vigil.
Having written you from the boathouse,
I have nowhere to go.
I painted there near the water.
I could have made it with you, but I
decided against your name, summer contagion,
the route I find breathing in the snow.
We do these lights.
They are large, drawing water.
High over the relief, the open window
says I was grabbed by privacy.
Remember me by privacy.
Anoint my sky, shame and snow.
It had begun to snow.
If I could begin almost anything,
it would be yellow light, and shirts and smoke.