“Over your body the clouds goHigh, high and icilyAnd a little flat, as if theyFloated on a glass that was invisible.Unlike swans, Having no reflections;Unlike you, With no strings attached.All cool, all blue. Unlike youYou, there on your back,Eyes to the sky.”

“I have fallen a long way. Clouds are floweringBlue and mystical over the face of the starsInside the church, the saints will all be blue,Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.”

“Mad Girl's Love SongI shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;I lift my lids and all is born again.(I think I made you up inside my head.)The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,And arbitrary blackness gallops in:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.I dreamed that you bewitched me into bedAnd sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.(I think I made you up inside my head.)God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:Exit seraphim and Satan's men:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.I fancied you'd return the way you said,But I grow old and I forget your name.(I think I made you up inside my head.)I should have loved a thunderbird instead;At least when spring comes they roar back again.I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

“So you got rid of your astonishment that someone could write so much more dynamically than you. You stopped cherishing your aloneness and poetic differentness to your delicately flat little bosom. You said: she's to good to forget. How about making her a friend and competitor — you could learn alot from her. So you'll try. So maybe she'll laugh in your face. So maybe she'll beat you hollow in the end. So anyhow, you'll try, and maybe, possibly, she can stand you. Here's hoping!”

“..I fancied you'd return the way you said,But I grow old and I forget your name.(I think I made you up inside my head.)I should have loved a thunderbird instead;At least when spring comes they roar back again.I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

“I?I walk alone;The midnight streetSpins itself from under my feet;My eyes shutThese dreaming houses all snuff out;Through a whim of mineOver gables the moon's celestial onionHangs high.IMake houses shrinkAnd trees diminishBy going far; my look's leashDangles the puppet-peopleWho, unaware how they dwindle,Laugh, kiss, get drunk,Nor guess that if I choose to blinkThey die.IWhen in good humour,Give grass its greenBlazon sky blue, and endow the sunWith gold;Yet, in my wintriest moods, I holdAbsolute powerTo boycott color and forbid any flowerTo be.IKnow you appearVivid at my side,Denying you sprang out of my head,Claiming you feelLove fiery enough to prove flesh real,Though it's quite clearAll your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,From me."Soliloquy of the Solipsist", 1956”

“DADDYYou do not do, you do not doAny more, black shoeIn which I have lived like a footFor thirty years, poor and white,Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you.You died before I had time―Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,Ghastly statue with one grey toeBig as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish AtlanticWhen it pours bean green over blueIn the waters of beautiful Nauset.I used to pray to recover you.Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish townScraped flat by the rollerOf wars, wars, wars.But the name of the town is common.My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two.So I never could tell where youPut your foot, your root,I never could talk to you.The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare.Ich, ich, ich, ich,I could hardly speak.I thought every German was you.And the language obscene An engine, an engineChuffing me off like a Jew.A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.I began to talk like a Jew.I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of ViennaAre not very pure or true.With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luckAnd my Taroc pack and my Taroc packI may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you,With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.And your neat mustacheAnd your Aryan eye, bright blue.Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You― Not God but a swastikaSo black no sky could squeak through.Every woman adores a Fascist,The boot in the face, the bruteBrute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy,In the picture I have of you,A cleft in your chin instead of your footBut no less a devil for that, no notAnd less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two.I was ten when they buried you.At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack,And they stuck me together with glue.And then I knew what to do.I made a model of you,A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw.And I said I do, I do.So daddy, I’m finally through.The black telephone’s off at the root,The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two―The vampire who said he was youAnd drank my blood for a year,Seven years, if you want to know.Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heartAnd the villagers never like you.They are dancing and stamping on you.They always knew it was you.Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”