Inside I brought
willows, the tips
bursting,
               blue
iris (I forget
the legend of long life
they represent)
and the branch of pepper tree
whose pink seeds
lack the passion of most fruit.

On my hands a perfume of pepper.

Outside the rain walks.

There were two.
Their posture
taken out of the wall­
paper (a ghost story)
Jack talked.     His
determined privacy against
my public face.      The poem
by dictation.        A
disturbance in the cone
of weather.
                               Neither of these
is not making.       The comic
is a matter of style
as yellow hands mark the worker.

The clown of dignity sits in a tree.
The clown of games hangs there too.
Which is which or where they go—
the point is to make others see
that two men in a tree is clearly
the same thing as poetry.