Things ...we grew lonely living among the things, so we gave the clock a face, the chair a back, the table four stout legs ...We fitted our shoes wit… - Lisel Mueller

The Blind Leading the Blind
Take my hand. There are two of us in this cave.
The sound you hear is water; you will hear it forever.
...You will learn toads from diamonds, the fist from the palm,
love from the sweat of love, falling from flying.
...Once I fell off a precipice. Once I found gold.
...There are two of us here. Touch me.

On Reading An Anthology of Postwar German Poetry
America saved me
...I was not crushed
under rubble, nor was I beaten
along a frozen highway;
my children are not dead
of postwar hunger;
...I have forced no one
into a chamber of death.
...I know enough to refuse to say
that life is good,
but I act as though it were,
and skeptical about love, I survive
by the witness of my own.

A Nude by Edward Hopper
...this body
is home, my childhood
is buried here, my sleep
rises and sets inside,
desire
crested and wore itself thin
between these bones—
I live here.