Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994

Now

Peace to each of us. Peace to the strangers. Let them love each other as we cannot now. We write this to tell you we are guilty and cannot live without the guilt and cannot live with it. Now He's in class teaching English Literature and she is approaching between the aisles naked, her buttocksflowing, her legs strutting their pride in themselves No one else but he sees her, which is exactly as he wants it. She is his private memory, discussing Chaucer. She seats herself, crossing her legs, brown pubic hair forming a large dot below her navel. She looks at him and smiles, the enigmatic kind, as if to say, I'm here, as you have asked of me. Now are you at peace? 168 | Poems of the 1990s ...