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For Philip Levine
Contents
2 Saudades
13 Salad Days
15 Ai
16 Dance Couple
17 Sing Sing
20 Red Herring
21 Little Road
22 Echo
23 Stargazing
24 Gold Record
NATURE BOY
If I had enough cages to keep all the birds
I’ve collected over the years then I would have
to open a shop because there’s only so much room
in a two-bedroom walk-up for 48 birds,
not to mention the dancing bears and the frogs,
or the different varieties of fish, the one
species of flea, and I almost forgot the proud
dogs and the lone mule, the profane one
who entered my life to curse at scribes and pharisees;
and maybe he’d let the mouse I found
forever dying at the end of a poem
ride on his back
