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nevertheless I’d like to know

what you are doing and where you are going.

On Gifts for Grace

BERNADETTE MAYER

I saw a great teapot

I wanted to get you this stupendous

100% cotton royal blue and black checked shirt,

There was a red and black striped one too

Then I saw these boots at a place called Chuckles

They laced up to about two inches above your ankles

All leather and in red, black or purple

It was hard to have no money today

I won’t even speak about the possible flowers and kinds of lingerie

All linen and silk with not-yet-perfumed laces

Brilliant enough for any of the Graces

Full of luxury, grace notes, prosperousness and charm

But I can only praise you with this poem—

Its being is the same as the meaning of your name

Love

ROY CROFT

I love you,

Not only for what you are,

But for what I am

When I am with you.

I love you,

Not only for what

You have made of yourself,

But for what

You are making of me.

I love you

For the part of me

That you bring out;

I love you

For putting your hand

Into my heaped-up heart

And passing over

All the foolish, weak things

That you can’t help

Dimly seeing there,

And for drawing out

Into the light

All the beautiful belongings

That no one else had looked

Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you

Are helping me to make

Of the lumber of my life

Not a tavern

But a temple;

Out of the works

Of my every day

Not a reproach

But a song.

I love you

Because you have done

More than any creed

Could have done

To make me good,

And more than any fate

Could have done

To make me happy.

You have done it

Without a touch,

Without a word,

Without a sign.

You have done it

By being yourself.

Perhaps that is what

Being a friend means,

After all.

To Hayley

WILLIAM BLAKE

Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache:

Do be my enemy—for friendship’s sake.

A Poison Tree

WILLIAM BLAKE

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water’d it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright;

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veil’d the pole:

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.

August

LOUISE GLÜCK

My sister painted her nails fuchsia,

a color named after a fruit.

All the colors were named after foods:

coffee frost, tangerine sherbet.

We sat in the backyard, waiting for our lives to resume

the ascent summer interrupted:

triumphs, victories, for which school

was a kind of practice.

The teachers smiled down at us, pinning on the blue ribbons.

And in our heads, we smiled down at the teachers.

Our lives were stored in our heads.

They hadn’t begun; we were both sure

we’d know when they did.

They certainly weren’t this.

We sat in the backyard, watching our bodies change:

first bright pink, then tan.

I dribbled baby oil on my legs; my sister

rubbed polish remover on her left hand,

tried another color.

We read, we listened to the portable radio.

Obviously this wasn’t life, this sitting around

in colored lawn chairs.

Nothing matched up to the dreams.

My sister kept trying to find a color she liked:

it was summer, they were all frosted.

Fuchsia, orange, mother-of-pearl.

She held her left hand in front of her eyes,

moved it from side to side.

Why was it always like this—

the colors so intense in the glass bottles,

so distinct, and on the hand

almost exactly alike,

a film of weak silver.

My sister shook the bottle. The orange

kept sinking to the bottom; maybe

that was the problem.

She shook it over and over, held it up to the light,

studied the words in the magazine.

The world was a detail, a small thing not yet

exactly right. Or like an afterthought, somehow

still crude or approximate.

What was real was the idea:

My sister added