What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I
walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-
conscious looking at the full moon.
   In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the
neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
   What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping
at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in
the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing
down by the watermelons?

   I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
   I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork
chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
   I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following
you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
   We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary
fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and
never passing the cashier.

   Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
    (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 
supermarket and feel absurd.)
   Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add
shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
   Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue
automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
   Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what
America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you
got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear
on the black waters of Lethe?

—Berkeley, 1955

I love the crown molding and the white granite countertops.

And look, dear! Stainless steel appliances! Don’t you love them?  

It’s such a perfect apartment, and, in every room, a coffered ceiling.     

And don’t you love the pink twin sinks, like porcelain scallops?

And listen to the faucets, 

like the rush of a waterfall heard through thick woods just as the birds began to sing early one morning years ago in the hills outside Florence. 

Where are you going?

Love fills me the way the sun surprises the room when I pull the string and the curtains open.

Pinch-pleat curtains, crinkle-voile, semi-opaque, and sheer! Soft as love when I stroke them, warm as love against my cheek, a scent of spring rain gentling the petunias when I wrap myself in them 

until I cannot see, until I cannot move my arms or legs. 

Of course, I’d love to see the guest bedroom with its walk-in closet and built-in shoe shelf, its en suite bath with the whirlpool tub!

Let me just wipe my eyes on these curtains. Let me just untangle.

The view through this window is so lovely, the far fingers of smoke trembling over the distant city where the workers—

rich black thoughts pour from the smokestacks is all I have to say about the workers.   

No, sorry, I’m still here, wrapped in the curtains. They were so alluring, 

voluptuous, really, if curtains can be voluptuous against bare skin. You continue with the tour, dear,

and I’ll be along presently. The sky is rose chiffon, the clouds like pressed flowers above the smokestacks,

just leave me here, restrained and lavished at once! And the window, with its inviting coolness

to the tongue. To my tongue. It’s like I am licking those smokestacks!