Pictures of a Gone World, #8

It was a face which darkness could kill

in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light

"We think differently at night"
she told me once
lying back languidly

And she would quote Cocteau
"I feel there is an angel in me" she'd say
"whom I am constantly shocking"

Then she would smile and look away
light a cigarette for me
sigh and rise

and stretch
her sweet anatomy

let fall a stocking


Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Pictures of a Gone World,
1955