MIXED COMPANY.<i> The University of Chicago Press: 80 pp., $11.95 paper</i>
<i> Alan Shapiro is professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill</i>
The Letter
The letter said you had to speak to me.
Please, if you love me, Alan, hurry. Please.
I read it and reread it, running down
the big stone steps into the underground,
and every time, as in an anagram,
the letters rearrange themselves again
as new words canceling the ones before:
Come or don’t come I really couldn’t care . . .
I never meant to hurt you like I did . . .
I never hurt you. There’s nothing to forgive . . .