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After Roselia Foundling Asylum and Maternity Hospital, 
corner of Cliff and Manilla This is the house I was born in. Look at it. Asylum. Narrate it: Notice the sloping cornice, look at the curved windows, etc. This is the house I was born in. The cast-iron balconies / not wide enough for bodies. Look at the photos: 3 stories, 8 front windows and a wide door. Dark red brick / inlaid with brown stone. Women’s bodies / expelling  / banishing  / Leaving the babies there. Look at the photos, include the photos.

I’m thinking about you and you’re humming while cutting a piece of wood. I’m positive you aren’t thinking about me which is fine as long as you aren’t thinking about yourself. I know and love the way you inhabit this house and the occasions we mutually create. But I don’t know the man you picture when you see yourself walking around the world inside your head and I’m jealous of the attention you pay that person whom I suspect of being devious.

To be shy, to lower your eyes after making a greeting. to know wherever you go you’ll be called on, to fear whoever you’re near will ask you, to wear the softer sides of the air in rooms filled with angers, your ship always docked in transparent slips whose wharves are sheerer than membranes.

Tha’ vahnahnah go-een to keel joo. Excuse me? Tha’ vahnahnah    ...    go-een to keel joo. I’m sorry, I don’t understand. O’ káy. Sô    ...    vahnahnah haf sostahnence, nô? Uh — O’ káy. Ees troo if  joo haf sostahnence, joo problee leev anothe’ thay? I suppose so, look — Alrigh. If  joo ee tha’ vahnahnah, joo weel be leeving ôp a-hed, righ? Yeah alright, so? O’ káy. Are joo thy-een now? What? Are joo thy-een now — a’ thees momen? I hope not. O’ káy. Ees troo    ...    ôp a-hed — joo thy some poin? Of course. Alrigh, sô, vahnahnah poosh you there. Um. Tha’ vahnahnah go-een to keel joo, baby.

He sits beside his wife who takes the wheel. Clutching coupons, he wanders the aisles of Stop & Save.  There’s no place he must be, no clock to punch.  Sure, there are bass in the lake, a balsa model in the garage, the par-three back nine. But it’s not the same. Time the enemy then, the enemy now. As he points the remote at the screen or pauses at the window, staring into the neighbor’s fence but not really seeing it, he listens to his wife in the kitchen, more amazed than ever—how women seem to know what to do.  How, with their cycles and timers, their rolling boils and three-minute eggs, they wait for something to start.  Or stop.

Someone is looking for us. I sensed it earlier at the creek while floating on my back, and again on Route 8 near Brookline. So we’ve detoured to this hillside eroding and crazy with markers. We’re looking for row mm or nn or something like that. I lug the baby; my wife runs ahead. This neighborhood knows her– she passes so easily between stones. She finds the grave, her father dead ten years now. In the time it takes to say kaddish the sun’s dropped. I set down my son and he crawls in the dimness, pulling himself up on the headstone. How delicately he fingers the marble. Quickly he rounds its corner. Vanishes. I’m thinking:grass, stone, quiet– then babbling from another world.

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'ns joy, Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Vers, Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce, And to our high-rais'd phantasie present, That undisturbèd Song of pure content, Ay sung before the saphire-colour'd throne To him that sits theron With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily, Where the bright Seraphim in burning row Their loud up-lifted Angel trumpets blow, And the Cherubick host in thousand quires Touch their immortal Harps of golden wires, With those just Spirits that wear victorious Palms, Hymns devout and holy Psalms Singing everlastingly; That we on Earth with undiscording voice May rightly answer that melodious noise; As once we did, till disproportion'd sin Jarr'd against natures chime, and with harsh din Broke the fair musick that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway’d In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood In first obedience, and their state of good. O may we soon again renew that Song And keep in tune with Heav'n, till God ere long To his celestial consort us unite, To live with him, and sing in endles morn of light.

Let the musicians begin, Let every instrument awaken and instruct us In love’s willing river and love’s dear discipline: We wait, silent, in consent and in the penance Of patience, awaiting the serene exaltation Which is the liberation and conclusion of expiation. Now may the chief musician say: “Lust and emulation have dwelt amoung us Like barbarous kings: have conquered us: Have inhabited our hearts: devoured and ravished —With the savage greed and avarice of fire— The substance of pity and compassion.”

Oh, I would have these tongues oracular Dip into silence, tease no more, let be! They madden, like some choral of the free Gusty and sweet against a prison-bar. To earth the boast that her gold empires are, The menace of delicious death to me, Great Undesign, strong as by God’s decree, Piercing the heart with beauty from afar! Music too winning to the sense forlorn! Of what angelic lineage was she born, Bred in what rapture?—These her sires and friends: Censure, Denial, Gloom, and Hunger’s throe. Praised be the Spirit that thro’ thee, Schubert! so Wrests evil unto wholly heavenly ends.

Stars from five wars, scars, Words filled with ice and fear, Nightflares and fogginess, and a studied regularity. Gon’ lay down my sword ’n’ shield— Down by the river side, down by the river side— Down by the river side...