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Sing now the heavy furniture of the fall, the journey’s ending. Strong Aeneas bears deep on his shoulders all the dark wood chairs and tables of destruction. Bruising, blunt, they force his feet on up the war-scraped hills past raped dead temples. All Achilles kills litters the trail of sofa legs with other endings of houses. Further up, gods sit changing their own upholsteries of deceit, ordaining shelves and benches as the goal of his dim voyage. Sometimes arrows drawn on chair backs point the way they must go on, signs that some corridor of destiny is reserving him a threshold. Aeneas weeps at wind or passion, but steadfastly keeps carrying battered merchandise marked ROME in one direction, pondering it all.

the rooms are chosen, then they move on the beads are wetted in the lime the weedlot boils in the blood of one eye the children first are cankered then they spin there are not routes, only dials the rocks are spun together in one ball the laundry is of rust, the pillow shrieks pianos all blow northward and return must be a bath if  I could find it is a map of all the ways that center intermission skulls are simply caps for all compression day’s light raising closets for its dark I put up the clothes and trail the keys that onyx knob in vacuum turns the train pressure on the pitches swaying back again a world without a heartbeat but it stays

When I wake now it’s below ocherous, saw-ridged pine beams. Haze streaks all three windows. I look up at the dog-eared, glossy magazine photo I’ve taken with me for years. It gets tacked like a claim to some new wall in the next place— Bill Russell & Wilt Chamberlain, one on one the final game of the 1969 NBA championship, two hard men snapped elbowing & snatching at a basketball as if it were a moment one of them might stay inside forever. I was with my father the night that game played on a fuzzy color television, in a jammed Fall River bar. Seagram & beer chasers for hoarse ex-jocks, smoke rifting the air. A drunk called him “Tiger” and asked about the year he’d made all-state guard— point man, ball-hawk, pacer. Something he rarely spoke of, & almost always with a gruff mix of impatience and shyness. Each year, days painting suburban tract houses & fighting with contractors followed by night shifts at the fire station followed by his kids swarming at breakfast and my mother trying to stay out of his way, each of the many stone-hard moments between 1941 & 1969— they made up a city of granite mills by a slate & blue river. That town was my father’s life, & still is. If he felt cheated by it, by its fate for him, to bear that disappointment, he kept it secret. That night, when he stared deep into a drunk’s memory, he frowned. He said nothing. He twisted on the stool, and ordered this guy a beer. Whatever my father & I have in common is mostly silence. And anger that keeps twisting back on itself, though not before it ruins, often, even something simple as a walk in the dunes at a warm beach. But what we share too is a love so awkward that it explains, with unreasoning perfection, why we still can’t speak easily to each other, about the past or anything else, and why I wake this far from the place where I grew up, while the wall above me claims now nothing has changed & all is different.

The length o’ days ageän do shrink An’ flowers be thin in meäd, among The eegrass a-sheenèn bright, along Brook upon brook, an’ brink by brink. Noo starlèns do rise in vlock on wing— Noo goocoo in nest-green leaves do sound— Noo swallows be now a-wheelèn round— Dip after dip, an’ swing by swing. The wheat that did leätely rustle thick Is now up in mows that still be new, An’ yollow bevore the sky o’ blue— Tip after tip, an’ rick by rick. While now I can walk a dusty mile I’ll teäke me a day, while days be clear, To vind a vew friends that still be dear, Feäce after feäce, an’ smile by smile.

A 29-year-old stewardess fell ... to her death tonight when she was swept through an emergency door that sud- denly sprang open ... The body ... was found ... three hours after the accident. — New York Times The states when they black out and lie there rolling    when they turn To something transcontinental    move by    drawing moonlight out of the great One-sided stone hung off the starboard wingtip    some sleeper next to An engine is groaning for coffee    and there is faintly coming in Somewhere the vast beast-whistle of space. In the galley with its racks Of trays    she rummages for a blanket    and moves in her slim tailored Uniform to pin it over the cry at the top of the door. As though she blew The door down with a silent blast from her lungs    frozen    she is black Out finding herself    with the plane nowhere and her body taken by the throat The undying cry of the void    falling    living    beginning to be something That no one has ever been and lived through    screaming without enough air Still neat    lipsticked    stockinged    girdled by regulation    her hat Still on    her arms and legs in no world    and yet spaced also strangely With utter placid rightness on thin air    taking her time    she holds it In many places    and now, still thousands of feet from her death she seems To slow    she develops interest    she turns in her maneuverable body To watch it. She is hung high up in the overwhelming middle of things in her Self    in low body-whistling wrapped intensely    in all her dark dance-weight Coming down from a marvellous leap    with the delaying, dumfounding ease Of a dream of being drawn    like endless moonlight to the harvest soil Of a central state of one’s country    with a great gradual warmth coming Over her    floating    finding more and more breath in what she has been using For breath    as the levels become more human    seeing clouds placed honestly Below her left and right    riding slowly toward them    she clasps it all To her and can hang her hands and feet in it in peculiar ways    and Her eyes opened wide by wind, can open her mouth as wide    wider and suck All the heat from the cornfields    can go down on her back with a feeling Of stupendous pillows stacked under her    and can turn    turn as to someone In bed    smile, understood in darkness    can go away    slant    slide Off tumbling    into the emblem of a bird with its wings half-spread Or whirl madly on herself    in endless gymnastics in the growing warmth Of wheatfields rising toward the harvest moon.    There is time to live In superhuman health    seeing mortal unreachable lights far down seeing An ultimate highway with one late priceless car probing it    arriving In a square town    and off her starboard arm the glitter of water catches The moon by its one shaken side    scaled, roaming silver    My God it is good And evil    lying in one after another of all the positions for love Making    dancing    sleeping    and now cloud wisps at her no Raincoat    no matter    all small towns brokenly brighter from inside Cloud    she walks over them like rain    bursts out to behold a Greyhound Bus shooting light through its sides    it is the signal to go straight Down like a glorious diver    then feet first    her skirt stripped beautifully Up    her face in fear-scented cloths    her legs deliriously bare    then Arms out    she slow-rolls over    steadies out    waits for something great To take control of her    trembles near feathers    planes head-down The quick movements of bird-necks turning her head    gold eyes the insight- eyesight of owls blazing into the hencoops    a taste for chicken overwhelming Her    the long-range vision of hawks enlarging all human lights of cars Freight trains    looped bridges    enlarging the moon racing slowly Through all the curves of a river    all the darks of the midwest blazing From above. A rabbit in a bush turns white    the smothering chickens Huddle    for over them there is still time for something to live With the streaming half-idea of a long stoop    a hurtling    a fall That is controlled    that plummets as it wills    turns gravity Into a new condition, showing its other side like a moon    shining New Powers    there is still time to live on a breath made of nothing But the whole night    time for her to remember to arrange her skirt Like a diagram of a bat    tightly it guides her    she has this flying-skin Made of garments    and there are also those sky-divers on tv sailing In sunlight    smiling under their goggles    swapping batons back and forth And He who jumped without a chute and was handed one by a diving Buddy. She looks for her grinning companion    white teeth    nowhere She is screaming    singing hymns    her thin human wings spread out From her neat shoulders    the air beast-crooning to her    warbling And she can no longer behold the huge partial form of the world    now She is watching her country lose its evoked master shape    watching it lose And gain    get back its houses and peoples    watching it bring up Its local lights    single homes    lamps on barn roofs    if she fell Into water she might live    like a diver    cleaving    perfect    plunge Into another    heavy silver    unbreathable    slowing    saving Element: there is water    there is time to perfect all the fine Points of diving    feet together    toes pointed    hands shaped right To insert her into water like a needle    to come out healthily dripping And be handed a Coca-Cola    there they are    there are the waters Of life    the moon packed and coiled in a reservoir    so let me begin To plane across the night air of Kansas    opening my eyes superhumanly Bright    to the damned moon    opening the natural wings of my jacket By Don Loper    moving like a hunting owl toward the glitter of water One cannot

An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince. The sun is blue and scarlet on my page, And yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, rage The yellowhammers mating. Yellow fire Blankets the captives dancing on their pyre, And the scorched lictor screams and drops his rod. Trojans are singing to their drunken God, Ares. Their helmets catch on fire. Their files Clank by the body of my comrade—miles Of filings! Now the scythe-wheeled chariot rolls Before their lances long as vaulting poles, And I stand up and heil the thousand men, Who carry Pallas to the bird-priest. Then The bird-priest groans, and as his birds foretold, I greet the body, lip to lip. I hold The sword that Dido used. It tries to speak, A bird with Dido’s sworded breast. Its beak Clangs and ejaculates the Punic word I hear the bird-priest chirping like a bird. I groan a little. “Who am I, and why?” It asks, a boy’s face, though its arrow-eye Is working from its socket. “Brother, try, O Child of Aphrodite, try to die: To die is life.” His harlots hang his bed With feathers of his long-tailed birds. His head Is yawning like a person. The plumes blow; The beard and eyebrows ruffle. Face of snow, You are the flower that country girls have caught, A wild bee-pillaged honey-suckle brought To the returning bridegroom—the design Has not yet left it, and the petals shine; The earth, its mother, has, at last, no help: It is itself. The broken-winded yelp Of my Phoenician hounds, that fills the brush With snapping twigs and flying, cannot flush The ghost of Pallas. But I take his pall, Stiff with its gold and purple, and recall How Dido hugged it to her, while she toiled, Laughing—her golden threads, a serpent coiled In cypress. Now I lay it like a sheet; It clinks and settles down upon his feet, The careless yellow hair that seemed to burn Beforehand. Left foot, right foot—as they turn, More pyres are rising: armored horses, bronze, And gagged Italians, who must file by ones Across the bitter river, when my thumb Tightens into their wind-pipes. The beaks drum; Their headman’s cow-horned death’s-head bites its tongue, And stiffens, as it eyes the hero slung Inside his feathered hammock on the crossed Staves of the eagles that we winged. Our cost Is nothing to the lovers, whoring Mars And Venus, father’s lover. Now his car’s Plumage is ready, and my marshals fetch His squire, Acoctes, white with age, to hitch Aethon, the hero’s charger, and its ears Prick, and it steps and steps, and stately tears Lather its teeth; and then the harlots bring The hero’s charms and baton—but the King, Vain-glorious Turnus, carried off the rest. “I was myself, but Ares thought it best The way it happened.” At the end of time, He sets his spear, as my descendants climb The knees of Father Time, his beard of scalps, His scythe, the arc of steel that crowns the Alps. The elephants of Carthage hold those snows, Turms of Numidian horse unsling their bows, The flaming turkey-feathered arrows swarm Beyond the Alps. “Pallas,” I raise my arm And shout, “Brother, eternal health. Farewell Forever.” Church is over, and its bell Frightens the yellowhammers, as I wake And watch the whitecaps wrinkle up the lake. Mother’s great-aunt, who died when I was eight, Stands by our parlor sabre. “Boy, it’s late. Vergil must keep the Sabbath.” Eighty years! It all comes back. My Uncle Charles appears. Blue-capped and bird-like. Phillips Brooks and Grant Are frowning at his coffin, and my aunt, Hearing his colored volunteers parade Through Concord, laughs, and tells her English maid To clip his yellow nostril hairs, and fold His colors on him. . . . It is I. I hold His sword to keep from falling, for the dust On the stuffed birds is breathless, for the bust Of young Augustus weighs on Vergil’s shelf: It scowls into my glasses at itself.

In the years to come they will say, “They fell like the leaves In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.” November has come to the forest, To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen. The year fades with the white frost On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows, Where the deer tracks were black in the morning. Ice forms in the shadows; Disheveled maples hang over the water; Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream. Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold. The yellow maple leaves eddy above them, The glittering leaves of the cottonwood, The olive, velvety alder leaves, The scarlet dogwood leaves, Most poignant of all. In the afternoon thin blades of cloud Move over the mountains; The storm clouds follow them; Fine rain falls without wind. The forest is filled with wet resonant silence. When the rain pauses the clouds Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls. In the evening the wind changes; Snow falls in the sunset. We stand in the snowy twilight And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud. Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight, Glimmering with floating snow. An owl cries in the sifting darkness. The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

November 1915 Today, as I rode by, I saw the brown leaves dropping from their tree

for Pat Boran That kind of summer's day when music comes down from the hills and sings in small back-rooms and half-sets from a century before batter their complex hobnails on the floor and long laments in overcoats and caps draw tears, reluctant from the porter-taps — that was the kind of day it was, that day when I forsook the world of earn and pay. There, on the cobbles of the market square, where toothless penny ballads rasped the air, there among spanners, scollops, hones, and pikes, limp Greyhound cabbage, mending-kits for bikes, velvet calves in creels, women's overalls, she shook my hand beside the market stalls. And there before the coulter of a plough, aware of all the gifts she could endow, aware, as women are, of all her powers, as startling as a bunch of winter flowers, she tricked from me my childish, sacred vow. I got to know her lovers one by one: some saw her in an eclipse of the sun, some saw her practise magic with strange herbs and made her opaque alchemies of verbs — some, for her sake, thought blood her favourite wine, and some thought spirits helped them to divine her arcane instincts and, as holy fools, would chant her words not known to any schools. Some thought that secret nurture made her grow and more believed she thrived in public show; some scattered syntax like the blackthorn snow in flashy spangles on the mud below and some, like me, immersed themselves in laws, for what good are the sparks without the straws? But none of these sufficed. All through the land I see the poets in their mad distress — all favoured rivals? No, but victims, yes. A creature driven by a savage gland, she takes, and then dismisses, out of hand, the men and women that she most does bless. She does not rest, she does not detumesce. I leave her by a river on a bed, a silken landscape underneath her head, and spread her in her finest courting gown on a spectacular eiderdown with painted eyes and rings to catch the light by the oblivious water overnight. Only the poets can make her come to life, the stricken catalyst, who call her wife — at dawn I give her bed a gentle shove and amputate the antennae of love and watch the river carry her away into the silence of a senseless bay where light ignores the facets of her rings and where names are not the names of things.

I drove to Oak Park, took two tours, And looked at some of the houses. I took the long way back along the lake. The place that I came home to—a cavernous Apartment on the East Side of Milwaukee— Seems basically a part of that tradition, With the same admixture of expansion and restraint: The space takes off, yet leaves behind a nagging Feeling of confinement, with the disconcerting sense That while the superficial conflicts got resolved, The underlying tensions brought to equilibrium, It isn’t yet a place in which I feel that I can live. Imagine someone reading. Contemplate a man Oblivious to his settings, and then a distant person Standing in an ordinary room, hemmed in by limitations, Yet possessed by the illusion of an individual life That blooms within its own mysterious enclosure, In a solitary space in which the soul can breathe And where the heart can stay—not by discovering it, But by creating it, by giving it a self-sustaining Atmosphere of depth, both in the architecture, And in the unconstructed life that it contains. In a late and very brief remark, Freud speculates That space is the projection of a “psychic apparatus” Which remains almost entirely oblivious to itself; And Wright extols “that primitive sense of shelter” Which can turn a house into a refuge from despair. I wish that time could bring the future back again And let me see things as they used to seem to me Before I found myself alone, in an emancipated state— Alone and free and filled with cares about tomorrow. There used to be a logic in the way time passed That made it flow directly towards an underlying space Where all the minor, individual lives converged. The moments borrowed their perceptions from the past And bathed the future in a soft, familiar light I remembered from home, and which has faded. And the voices get supplanted by the rain, The nights seem colder, and the angel in the mind That used to sing to me beneath the wide suburban sky Turns into dreamwork and dissolves into the air, While in its place a kind of monument appears, Magnificent in isolation, compromised by proximity And standing in a small and singular expanse— As though the years had been a pretext for reflection, And my life had been a phase of disenchantment— As the faces that I cherished gradually withdraw, The reassuring settings slowly melt away, And what remains is just a sense of getting older. In a variation of the parable, the pure of heart Descend into a kingdom that they never wanted And refused to see. The homely notions of the good, The quaint ideas of perfection swept away like Adolescent fictions as the real forms of life Deteriorate with manically increasing speed, The kind man wakes into a quiet dream of shelter, And the serenity it brings—not in reflection, But in the paralyzing fear of being mistaken, Of losing everything, of acquiescing in the Obvious approach (the house shaped like a box; The life that can’t accommodate another’s)— As the heart shrinks down to tiny, local things. Why can’t the more expansive ecstasies come true? I met you more than thirty years ago, in 1958, In Mrs. Wolford’s eighth grade history class. All moments weigh the same, and matter equally; Yet those that time brings back create the fables Of a happy or unsatisfying life, of minutes Passing on the way to either peace or disappointment— Like a paper calendar on which  it’s always autumn And we’re back in school again; or a hazy afternoon Near the beginning of October, with the World Series Playing quietly on the radio, and the windows open, And the California sunlight filling up the room. When I survey the mural stretched across the years —Across my heart—I notice mostly small, neglected Parts of no importance to the whole design, but which, In their obscurity, seem more permanent and real. I see the desks and auditorium, suffused with Yellow light connoting earnestness and hope that Still remains there, in a space pervaded by a Soft and supple ache too deep to contemplate— As though the future weren’t real, and the present Were amorphous, with nothing to hold on to, And the past were there forever. And the art That time inflicts upon its subjects can’t Eradicate the lines sketched out in childhood, Which harden into shapes as it recedes. I wish I knew a way of looking at the world That didn’t find it wanting, or of looking at my Life that didn’t always see a half-completed Structure made of years and filled with images And gestures emblematic of the past, like Gatsby’s Light, or Proust’s imbalance on the stones. I wish there were a place where I could stay And leave the world alone—an enormous stadium Where I could wander back and forth across a field Replete with all the incidents and small details That gave the days their textures, that bound the Minutes into something solid, and that linked them All together in a way that used to seem eternal. We used to go to dances in my family’s ancient Cadillac, which blew up late one summer evening Climbing up the hill outside Del Mar. And later I can see us steaming off the cover of the Beatles’ Baby-butcher album at your house in Mission Bay; And three years later listening to the Velvet Underground performing in a roller skating rink. Years aren’t texts, or anything like texts; And yet I often think of 1968 that way, as though That single year contained the rhythms of the rest, As what began in hope and eagerness concluded in Intractable confusion, as the wedding turned into a Puzzling fiasco over poor John Godfrey’s hair. The parts were real, and yet the dense and living Whole they once composed seems broken now, its Voice reduced to disembodied terms that speak to me More distantly each day, until the tangled years Are finally drained of feeling, and collapse into a Sequence of the places where we lived: your parents’ House in Kensington, and mine above the canyon: Then the flat by Sears in Cambridge, where we Moved when we got married, and the third floor Of the house on Francis Avenue, near Harvard Square; The big apartment in Milwaukee where we lived the Year that John was born, and last of all the House in Whitefish Bay, where you live now And all those years came inexplicably undone In mid-July. The sequence ended late last year. Suppose we use a lifetime as a measure of the world As it exists for one. Then half of mine has ended, While the fragment which has recently come to be Contains no vantage point from which to see it whole. I think that people are the sum of their illusions, That the cares that make them difficult to see Are eased by distance, with their errors blending In an intricate harmony, their truths abiding In a subtle “spark” or psyche (each incomparable, Yet each the same as all the others) and their Disparate careers all joined together in a tangled Moral vision whose intense, meandering design Seems lightened by a pure simplicity of feeling, As in grief, or in the pathos of a life Cut off by loneliness, indifference or hate, Because the most important thing is human happiness— Not in the sense of private satisfactions, but of Lives that realize themselves in ordinary terms And with the quiet inconsistencies that make them real. The whole transcends its tensions, like the intimate Reflections on the day that came at evening, whose Significance was usually overlooked, or misunderstood, Because the facts were almost always unexceptional. Two years ago we took our son to Paris. Last night I picked him up and took him to a Lou Reed show, And then took him home. I look at all the houses as I Walk down Hackett Avenue to work. I teach my classes, Visit friends, cook introspective meals for myself, Yet in the end the minutes don’t add up. What’s lost Is the perception of the world as something good And held in common; as a place to be perfected In the kinds of everyday divisions and encounters That endowed it with integrity and structure, And that merged its private moments with the past. What broke it into pieces? What transformed the Flaws that gave it feeling into objects of a deep and Smoldering resentment—like coming home too early, Or walking too far ahead of you on the rue Jacob? I wish that life could be a window on the sun, Instead of just this porch where I can stand and Contemplate the wires that lace the parking lot And feel it moving towards some unknown resolution. The Guggenheim Museum just reopened. Tonight I Watched a segment of the news on PBS—narrated by a Woman we met years ago at Bob’s—that showed how Most of Wright’s interior had been restored, And how the ramp ascends in spirals towards the sky. I like the houses better—they flow in all directions, Merging with the scenery and embodying a milder, More domestic notion of perfection, on a human scale That doesn’t overwhelm the life that it encloses. Isn’t there a way to feel at home within the Confines of this bland, accommodating structure Made of souvenirs and emblems, like the hammock Hanging in the backyard of an undistinguished Prairie School house in Whitefish Bay—the lineal, Reduced descendant of the “Flameproof” Wright house Just a block or two away from where I live now? I usually walk along the street on Sunday, Musing on how beautiful it seems, how aspects of it Recapitulate the Oak Park house and studio, with Open spaces buried in a labyrinthine interior, And with the entrance half-concealed on the side— A characteristic feature of his plans that made it Difficult to find, although the hope was that in Trying to get inside, the visitor’s eye would come to Linger over subtleties he might have failed to see— In much the way that in the course of getting older, And trying to reconstruct the paths that led me here, I found myself pulled backwards through these old, Uncertain passages, distracted by the details, And meeting only barriers to understanding why the Years unfolded as they did, and why my life Turned out the way it has—like his signature “Pathway of Discovery,” with each diversion Adding to the integrity of the whole. There is this sweep life has that makes the Accidents of time and place seem small. Everything alters, and the personal concerns That love could hold together for a little while Decay, and then the world seems strange again, And meaningless and free. I miss the primitive Confusions, and the secret way things came to me Each evening, and the pain. I still wonder Where the tears went, standing in my room each day And quietly inhabiting a calm, suspended state Enveloped by the emptiness that scares and thrills me, With the background noise cascading out of nothing Like a song that makes the days go by, a song Incorporating everything—not into what it says, But simply in the way it touches me, a single Image of dispersal, the inexhaustible perception Of contingency and transience and isolation. It brings them back to me. I have the inwardness I think I must have wanted, and the quietude, The solitary temper, and this space where I can Linger with the silence curling all around me Like the sound of pure passage, waiting here Surrounded by the furniture, the books and lists And all these other emblems of the floating world, The prints of raindrops that begin as mist, that fall Discreetly through the atmosphere, and disappear. And then I feel them in the air, in a reserved, More earthly music filled with voices reassembling In a wellspring of remembrance, talking to me again, And finding shelter in the same evasive movements I can feel in my own life, cloaked in a quiet Dignity that keeps away the dread of getting old, And fading out of other people’s consciousness, And dying –with its deepest insecurities and fears Concealed by their own protective colorations, As the mind secretes its shell and calls it home. It has the texture of an uncreated substance, Hovering between the settings it had come to love And some unformulated state I can’t imagine— Waiting for the telephone to ring, obsessed with Ways to occupy these wide, unstructured hours, And playing records by myself, and waking up alone. All things are disparate, yet subject to the same Intense, eradicating wills of time and personality, Like waves demolishing the walls love seemed to build Between our lives and emptiness, the certainty they Seemed to have just two or three short years ago, Before the anger spread its poison over everything. I think about the way our visions locked together In a nightmare play of nervousness and language, Living day to day inside the concentrated Force of that relentless argument, whose words Swept over us in formless torrents of anxiety, two People clinging to their versions of their lives Almost like children—living out each other’s Intermittent fantasies, that fed upon themselves As though infected by some vile, concentrated hatred; Who then woke up and planned that evening’s dinner. It’s all memories now, and distance. Miles away The cat is sleeping on the driveway, John’s in school, And sunlight filters through a curtain in the kitchen. Nothing really changes—the external world intrudes And then withdraws, and then becomes continuous again. I went downtown today and got a lamp with pendant Lanterns made of opalescent art glass—part, I guess, Of what this morning’s paper called the “Wright craze.” I like the easy way the days go by, the parts of aging That have come to seem familiar, and the uneventful Calm that seems to settle on the house at night. Each morning brings the mirror’s reassuring face, As though the years had left the same enduring person Simplified and changed—no longer vaguely desperate, No longer torn, yet still impatient with himself And still restless; but drained of intricacy and rage, Like a mild paradox—uninteresting in its own right, Yet existing for the sake of something stranger. Now and then our life comes over me, in brief, Involuntary glimpses of that world that blossom Unexpectedly, in fleeting moments of regret That come before the ache, the pang that gathers Sharply, like an indrawn breath—a strange and Thoughtful kind of pain, as though a steel Band had somehow snapped inside my heart. I don’t know. But what I do know is that None of it is ever going to come to me again. Why did I think a person only distantly like me Might finally represent my life? What aspects Of my attitudes, my cast of mind, my inconclusive Way of tossing questions at the world had I Supposed might realize another person’s fantasies And turn her into someone else—who gradually became A separate part of me, and argued with the very Words I would have used, and looked at me through Eyes I’d looked at as though gazing at myself? I guess we only realize ourselves in dreams, Or in these self-reflexive reveries sustaining All the charms that contemplation holds—until the Long enchantment of the soul with what it sees Is lifted, and it startles at a space alight with Objects of its infantile gaze, like people in a mall. I saw her just the other day. I felt a kind of Comfort at her face, one tinctured with bemusement At the strange and guarded person she’d become— Attractive, vaguely friendly, brisk (too brisk), But no one I could think might represent my life. Why did I even try to see myself in what’s outside? The strangeness pushes it away, propels the vision Back upon itself, into these regions filled with Shapes that I can wander through and never see, As though their image were inherently unreal. The houses on a street, the quiet backyard shade, The room restored to life with bric-a-brac— I started by revisiting these things, then slowly Reconceiving them as forms of loss made visible That balanced sympathy and space inside an Abstract edifice combining reaches of the past With all these speculations, all this artful Preening of the heart. I sit here at my desk, Perplexed and puzzled, teasing out a tangled Skein of years we wove together, and trying to Combine the fragments of those years into a poem. Who cares if life—if someone’s actual life—is Finally insignificant and small? There’s still a Splendor in the way it flowers once and fades And leaves a carapace behind. There isn’t time to Linger over why it happened, or attempt to make its Mystery come to life again and last, like someone Still embracing the confused perceptions of himself Embedded in the past, as though eternity lay there— For heaven’s a delusion, and eternity is in the details, And this tiny, insubstantial life is all there is. —And that would be enough, but for the reoccurring Dreams I often have of you. Sometimes at night The banished unrealities return, as though a room Suffused with light and poetry took shape around me. Pictures line the walls. It’s early summer. Somewhere in Remembrance of ThingsPast, Marcel, Reflecting on his years with “Albertine”—with X— Suggests that love is just a consciousness of distance, Of the separation of two lives in time and space. I think the same estrangement’s mirrored in each life, In how it seems both adequate and incomplete—part Day-to-day existence, part imaginary construct Beckoning at night, and sighing through my dreams Like some disconsolate chimera, or the subject Of a lonely, terrifying sadness; or the isolation Of a quiet winter evening, when the house feels empty, And silence intervenes. But in the wonderful Enclosure opening in my heart, I seem to recognize Our voices lilting in the yard, inflected by the Rhythms of a song whose words are seamless And whose lines are never-ending. I can almost See the contours of your face, and sense the Presence of the trees, and reimagine all of us Together in a deep, abiding happiness, as if the Three of us inhabited a fragile, made-up world That seemed to be so permanent, so real. I have this fantasy: It’s early in the evening. You and I are sitting in the backyard, talking. Friends arrive, then drinks and dinner, conversation… The lovely summer twilight lasts forever… What’s the use? What purpose do these speculations serve? What Mild enchantments do these meditations leave? They’re just the murmurs of an age, of middle age, That help to pass the time that they retrieve Before subsiding, leaving everything unchanged. Each of us at times has felt the future fade, Or seen the compass of his life diminished, Or realized some tangible illusion was unreal. Driving down to Evanston last week, I suddenly Remembered driving down that road eight years ago, So caught up in some story I’d just finished That I’d missed the way the countryside was changing— How in place of trees there now were office towers And theme parks, parts of a confusingly panoply of Barns and discount malls transfiguring a landscape Filled with high, receding clouds and rows of flimsy Houses in what used to be a field. I thought of Other people’s lives, and how impossible it seemed To grasp them on the model of my own—as little Mirrors of infinity—or sense their forms of Happiness, or in their minor personal upheavals Feel the sweep of time reduced to human scale And see its abstract argument made visible. I thought of overarching dreams of plenitude— How life lacks shape until it’s given one by love, And how each soul is both a kingdom in itself And part of some incorporating whole that Feels and has a face and lets it live forever. All of these seemed true, and cancelled one another, Leaving just the feeling of an unseen presence Tracing out the contours of a world erased, Like music tracing out the contours of the mind— For life has the form of a winding curve in space And in its wake the human figure disappears. Look at our surroundings—where a previous age Could visualize a landscape we see borders, Yet I think the underlying vision is the same: A person positing a world that he can see And can’t contain, and vexed by other people. Everything is possible; some of it seemed real Or nearly real, yet in the end it spoke to me alone, In phrases echoing the isolation of a meager Ledge above a waterfall, or rolling across a vast, Expanding plain on which there’s always room, But only room for one. It starts and ends Inside an ordinary room, while in the interim Brimming with illusions, filled with commonplace Delights that make the days go by, with simple Arguments and fears, and with the nervous Inkling of some vague, utopian conceit Transforming both the landscape and our lives, Until we look around and find ourselves at home, But in a wholly different world. And even those Catastrophes that seemed to alter everything Seem fleeting, grounded in a natural order All of us are subject to, and ought to celebrate. —Yet why? That things are temporary doesn’t Render them unreal, unworthy of regretting. It’s not as though the past had never happened: All those years were real, and their loss was real, And it is sad—I don’t know what else to call it. I’m glad that both of us seem happy. Yet what Troubles me is just the way what used to be a world Turned out, in retrospect, to be a state of mind, And no more tangible than that. And now it’s gone, And in its place I find the image of a process Of inexorable decay, or of some great unraveling That drags the houses forward into emptiness And backwards into pictures of the intervening days Love pieced together out of nothing. And I’m Certain that this austere vision finally is true, And yet it strikes me as too meager to believe. It comes from much too high above the world And seems to me too hopeless, too extreme— But then I found myself one winter afternoon Remembering a quiet morning in a classroom And inventing everything again, in ordinary Terms that seemed to comprehend a childish Dream of love, and then the loss of love, And all the intricate years between.