the address book that slips
inside my pocket…
late bloomer, connoisseuse
of dregs, “you must cultivate
a why not me? attitude”
toward your work,
you said, and what
will bring your death.
always on fury’s cusp:
“revolutions conceived
in the fields are not
the same as revo-
lutions conceived in
the cellar”—you’re convening
a committee against
the committee, sending
up a sapling
through a rock.
take out the marrow, put in the marrow,
save a life, save another life—
the slight slope, you thought, was better than
the rise, to be in a hurry somehow
childish, degrading.
a wisp of smile below a wisp of hair,
the high view from your ivory aerie:
we took a walk where sere grass
reached our shoulders. Hot words
a couple sent drifted over
the water: “what a waste, a waste
of time” you said, and shrugged.
after the war bravery
lost its occasion, all
the jokes that were yours were
one by one replaced
by secrets.
from the window seat of your usual flight back
and forth above the Rockies, you laid down
the colors in short brush strokes,
following the round shadows the clouds cast
on the perfect squares of the plains.
a great blue heron—your totem
I saw one this morning and thought how weird
to say “feathering an oar,”
and remembered your sail’s quick
thuck-a-thuck-a-thuck, the thing
I miss most is Nature,
you said, in the nature
of arguments these days.
A life spent tending
to beasts then unspeakable
agony months
of agony mute
as the non-human world
as you turned and were
turned in strangers’
beds. And now your names
together on the cold stone face,
a veil draped over the pasture.
“I will never again suffer an
Eastern winter” or summer
blowing in on the laughter of fools.
in Paris, where you never were, a girl
with red hair half way down her back
is reading a poem about your drunken father,
the drummer, aloud to a metronome’s tock.
an idea was better
than writing it down, but flagging
a taxi called for
manifestation, on tiptoe
legs akimbo, and a two-
fingered whistle, stark
and shrill as a swallow’s—
now your bold face
has joined the death
masks you so admired
for their perfection.
on the phone I heard the white
pines wind-
ing, curiosity
shining through
a bridled courtesy.
we followed the sound of the waterfall below
the sibyl's temple and knew from the sudden
humming that we'd found the very
spot where Cinzia
stood listening, while
Propertius called and
called her name—
and wouldn't answer.
smallest monument bound
in marble paper, torn
leather spine:
the number you have reached is not in service
“les miens” he used to say
these were once mine
these once were mine
