From 'Pictures of the Gone World'
Number 8
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti


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