I am inclined. Now that my heart is laid bare, to list among my armor, these things. I apologize that some of them are in Portuguese. Or French. Or English.

• LVII, e.e. cummings. I must admit that I rarely like cummings, but this is really about the loveliest poem there is, and I would gladly seduce this person I don’t know for reminding me of it.

• The Shield of Achilles, W.H. Auden. Not for those furious apologists of the future.

• As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life, Walt Whitman. We too lie in drifts at your feet.

• Love Letter, Sylvia Plath. There at the crossroads.

• Sonnet El Desdichado, V. Gerard de Nerval. Et j’ai deux fois vanqueur traversé l’Achéron. Or rather, trois fois.

• Dirge, John Webster.

• Song, Thomas Carew.

• Manhã de Carnval, Luiz Bonfá. If, as my bassoon teacher says, the sixth is the most evocative interval in music, this is the most evocative sixth of all.

• The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot. I had a friend back in college named Mitch who hated this poem and recited it in such a way that it was impossible to forget that Mr. Eliot was a horrible misanthrope. Nonetheless.