Liberties

sitting in the bower  after lunch with  my sadness    like unto Magdalene our defectiveness known all around the town    (a passion for extravagant apology) (flimsy promise to do better from now on)   I knew the crowd had stones  heating the hollows of their hands   (the teacher has always shown me the underlying structure of   a situation, though often  years after I no longer cared, was  no longer there, at all)   stone and bread are alike in the hands of the just   bread and stone the same