Extraits

The Man Closing Up," from Night Light" (1967),

would make his bed,

If he could sleep on it.

He would make his bed with white sheets

And disappear into the white,

Like a man diving,

If he could be certain

That the light

Would not keep him awake,

The light that reaches

To the bottom.

dour vision of life's journey: from "Sestina on Six Words by Weldon Kees"

There is no way to ease the burden.

The voyage leads on from harm to harm,

A land of others and of silence.

"The Miami of Other Days"

The winter streets an orchestra of horns

And gods slept under tabernacle tents

That sprang up overnight on circus grounds

Like giant toadstools yearning for respectability.

In a portrait of himself at age seven he writes :

sometimes he would squat among the foul weeds of the vacant lot,

Waiting for dusk and someone dear to come

And whip him down the street, but gently, home.

"Poem to Be Read at 3 A.M."

Excepting the diner

On the outskirts

The town of Ladora

At 3 A.M.

Was dark but

For my headlights

And up in

One second story room

A single light.

A more recent poem on the Great Depression shows his cynical side:

Agriculture embraced Industry,

Mammothly, on public walls.

Meanwhile we camped out underneath

Great smiles on billboards fading.

How shall I speak of Doom, and ours in special,

But as of something altogether common ?