Selected Poems: 1950–2012

The custom of the house, not ours, the sun
Fading the silver-blue Fortuny curtains,

Will speak at last of death, will understand,

While at the window peer two crones
Who once were Juliet and Jessica.

Clean as an axe blade driven in a stump;

The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.

AUNT JENNIFER’S TIGERS

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,

This is our sole defense against the season;

raw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass