for Ingeborg Bachmann

At the Salton Sea or Eastern coal towns
and midway on the stair or in Central Park
or Bucharest between light and dark 
each gem-like Orthodox church its anti-
concrete morning insists on solitude, what
remains. Or in Midwestern cul-de-sacs
I understood lingering, the right-hand self
devoted to architecture the left-hand self not
devoted to anything at all as what remains

fissures stone embankments, scatters salt
over ice to make a little future to refer to
walking over frozen rivers mind alternating
like an eagle, one eye watching as the other
points to the sky waning, wanting because
what a possession the feather-armor of eagles
they seem never to be cold or to long for July
as I long for the fondly phrased dog days
of summer, Caesar’s birth, spring lambs sold
at market before the 1st. As if distant heat
might make sense of interior’s glittering icons

one body nestles to the side of another
become animal even as the lyric figure revolving
the mind’s eye for some reason, for no reason
costumed Pre-Raphaelite is led to the cliffs
musked and bound but still so devoted as if
light’s heart had just broken against its glass
bridge lights tinseling blue river hue because yes
even now I aestheticize you I aestheticize loss—
soft murmurs of being-animal cannot save us