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This is my past where no one knows me. These are my friends whom I can’t name— Here in a field where no one chose me, The faces older, the voices the same. Why does this stranger rise to greet me? What is the joke that makes him smile, As he calls the children together to meet me, Bringing them forward in single file? I nod pretending to recognize them, Not knowing exactly what I should say. Why does my presence seem to surprise them? Who is the woman who turns away? Is this my home or an illusion? The bread on the table smells achingly real. Must I at last solve my confusion, Or is confusion all I can feel?

Just as he changes himself, in the end eternity changes him. —Mallarmé On the phonograph, the voice of a woman already dead for three decades, singing of a man who could make her do anything. On the table, two fragile glasses of black wine, a bottle wrapped in its towel. It is that room, the one we took in every city, it is as I remember: the bed, a block of moonlight and pillows. My fingernails, pecks of light on your thighs. The stink of the fire escape. The wet butts of cigarettes you crushed one after another. How I watched the morning come as you slept, more my son than a man ten years older. How my breasts feel, years later, the tongues swishing in my dress, some yours, some left by other men. Since then, I have always wakened first, I have learned to leave a bed without being seen and have stood at the washbasins, wiping oil and salt from my skin, staring at the cupped water in my two hands. I have kept everything you whispered to me then. I can remember it now as I see you again, how much tenderness we could wedge between a stairwell and a police lock, or as it was, as it still is, in the voice of a woman singing of a man who could make her do anything.

Cutlery clatters into the sink. But always the characters, uniquely themselves, only some decades older. They search for their coats. You were, she reminds him, our resident nomad, come to pitch your tent here, sidewalks for sand, unaccustomed taboos: Morningside Heights, one of your lives. Thirty years since the awkward goodbye? Before he goes— East Africa his beat, Germany hers—he’ll visit the nephew, the namesake in Boston who drives a cab, sends a pittance each month to a wellhead in—we’ll call it Sudan. He explains how it works, this drip feed of cash to Sudan from the United States: cheap, fast. She’s not clear about this—he jots her a website: it’s a place she can go. So they won’t meet again...suddenly Can you forgive me? he blurts— a classmate’s apartment, Upper West Side, the grown child’s room, bears in tidy shrines, scrum of sloughed coats. In the kitchen friends wash up. Sound of laughter. Sound of water flowing out of a tap.Yes, she replies, shocked by the twinge, then ache, of remorse. She “forgot”? And him—thirty years— the place still hurts?It’s myself I can’t forgive, she knows later. Right now, vague shame. End of March. Maybe April. Street trees are trying to bloom. The irretrievable sits on the table, white as a plate. He holds her her coat.

Rings possess fingers. Fingers remember what the eyes have blocked. The blindness in this case is figurative. The figure in this case is curvaceous. ) Milled, folded, soldered. Inlaid omen. Mokume gane. Ifs as hinges. Ands as pins. Rings as reunions. ) In some remote pre-dawn eye slit the horizon largely the same the cinquefoils still chirpy and obliging the ox-eyed daisies and the daisies fleabane and the worts and weeds the thistles and yarrows still healing and exotic in their ways— Weeds bind. Tongues beard. Thimbles berry. Balms bee. Flags blue. ) Rain clarifies colors— colors reveal the brief ambition of these provincial weeds. In gullies, mosses soft, mosses bright as dyed suede feel rich beneath scrubbed feet. Rain—nature’s iteration— light paradiddles on the surface of the creek. How free-making this word (penniless) before a judge!

An idle poet, here and there, Looks round him; but, for all the rest, The world, unfathomably fair, Is duller than a witling’s jest. Love wakes men, once a lifetime each; They lift their heavy lids, and look; And, lo, what one sweet page can teach, They read with joy, then shut the book. And some give thanks, and some blaspheme And most forget; but, either way, That and the Child’s unheeded dream Is all the light of all their day.

I came awake in kindergarten, under the letter K chalked neat on a field-green placard leaned on the blackboard's top edge. They'd caged   me in a metal desk—the dull word writ to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill when a boy I'd kissed drew me as a whiskered troll in art. On my sheet, the puffy clouds I made to keep rain in let torrents dagger loose. "Screw those who color in the lines," my mom had preached, words I shared that landed me on a short chair facing the corner's empty, sheetrock page. Craning up, I found my K high above. You'll have to grow to here, its silence said. And in the surrounding alphabet, my whole life hid— names of my beloveds, sacred vows I'd break. With my pencil stub applied to wall, I moved around the loops and vectors, Z to A, learning how to mean, how in the mean world to be. But while I worked the room around me began to smudge—like a charcoal sketch my mom was rubbing with her thumb. Then the instant went, the month, and every season smeared, till with a wrenching arm tug I was here, grown, but still bent to set down words before the black eraser swipes our moment into cloud, dispersing all to zip. And when I blunder in the valley of the shadow of blank about to break in half, my being leans against my spinal K, which props me up, broomstick straight, a strong bone in the crypt of meat I am.

Words torn, unseen, unseemly, scene some far suburb’s mall lot Summer’s theme: this year’s humid —to sweat is to know— pen squeezed too tight yields ink as blood or pus so the phrase scraped, removed offending thine eye: “Outsource Bush” Against which, insource what? Who will do it? Most terrible predicate—high above mountains snow-capped even in August in-flight motion picture Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Ay, gaze upon her rose-wreathed hair, And gaze upon her smile; Seem as you drank the very air Her breath perfumed the while: And wake for her the gifted line, That wild and witching lay, And swear your heart is as a shrine, That only owns her sway. ’Tis well: I am revenged at last,— Mark you that scornful cheek,— The eye averted as you pass’d, Spoke more than words could speak. Ay, now by all the bitter tears That I have shed for thee,— The racking doubts, the burning fears,— Avenged they well may be— By the nights pass’d in sleepless care, The days of endless woe; All that you taught my heart to bear, All that yourself will know. I would not wish to see you laid Within an early tomb; I should forget how you betray’d, And only weep your doom: But this is fitting punishment, To live and love in vain,— Oh my wrung heart, be thou content, And feed upon his pain. Go thou and watch her lightest sigh,— Thine own it will not be; And bask beneath her sunny eye,— It will not turn on thee. ’Tis well: the rack, the chain, the wheel, Far better hadst thou proved; Ev’n I could almost pity feel, For thou art nor beloved.

Beside a spreading elm, from whose high boughs Like knotted tufts the crow’s light dwelling shows, Where screened from northern blasts, and winter-proof, Snug stands the parson’s barn with thatched roof; At chaff-strewed door where, in the morning ray, The gilded motes in mazy circles play, And sleepy Comrade in the sun is laid, More grateful to the cur than neighbouring shade. In snowy shirt unbraced, brown Robin stood, And leant upon his flail in thoughtful mood: His full round cheek where deeper flushes glow, The dewy drops which glisten on his brow; His dark cropped pate that erst at church or fair, So smooth and silky, showed his morning’s care, Which, all uncouth in matted locks combined, Now, ends erect, defies the ruffling wind; His neck-band loose, and hosen rumpled low, A careful lad, nor slack at labour, show. Nor scraping chickens chirping ’mongst the straw, Nor croaking rook o’erhead, nor chattering daw; Loud-breathing cow amongst the rampy weeds, Nor grunting sow that in the furrows feeds: Nor sudden breeze that shakes the quaking leaves, And lightly rustles through the scattered sheaves; Nor floating straw that skims athwart his nose, The deeply-musing youth may discompose. For Nelly fair, the blithest village maid, Whose tuneful voice beneath the hedgerow-shade, At early milking, o’er the meadows borne, E’er cheered the ploughman’s toil at rising morn: The neatest maid that e’er, in linen gown, Bore cream and butter to the market town: The tightest lass, that with untutored air, E’er footed alehouse floor at wake or fair, Since Easter last had Robin’s heart possessed, And many a time disturbed his nightly rest. Full oft, returning from the loosened plough, He slacked his pace, and knit his thoughtful brow; And oft, ere half his thresher’s talk was o’er, Would muse, with arms across, at cooling door: His mind thus bent, with downcast eyes he stood, And leant upon his flail in thoughtful mood. His soul o’er many a soft rememberance ran, And, muttering to himself, the youth began. ‘Ah! happy is the man whose early lot Hath made him master of a furnished cot; Who trains the vine that round his window grows, And after setting sun his garden hoes; Whose wattled pales his own enclosure shield, Who toils not daily in another’s field. Wheree’er he goes, to church or market-town, With more respect he and his dog are known; A brisker face he wears at wake or fair, Nor views with longing eyes the pedlar’s ware, But buys at will or ribbands, gloves or beads, And willing maidens to the alehouse leads; And, oh! secure from toils which cumber life, He makes the maid he loves an easy wife. Ah, Nelly! canst thou, with contented mind, Become the helpmate of a labouring hind, And share his lot, whate’er the chances be, Who hath no dower but love to fix on thee? Yes, gayest maid may meekest matron prove, And things of little note may ’token love. When from the church thou cam’st at eventide And I and red-haired Susan by thy side, I pulled the blossoms from the bending tree, And some to Susan gave, and some to thee; Thine were the best, and well thy smiling eye The difference marked, and guessed the reason why. When on a holiday we rambling strayed, And passed old Hodge’s cottage in the glade; Neat was the garden dressed, sweet hummed the bee, I wished both cot and Nelly made for me; And well methought thy very eyes revealed The self-same wish within thy breast concealed. When artful, once, I sought my love to tell, And spoke to thee of one who loved thee well, You saw the cheat, and jeering homeward hied, Yet secret pleasure in thy looks I spied. Ay, gayest maid may meekest matron prove, And smaller signs than these have ’tokened love.’ Now, at a distance, on the neighbouring plain, With creaking wheels slow comes the heavy wain: High on its towering load a maid appears, And Nelly’s voice sounds shrill in Robin’s ears. Quick from his hand he throws the cumbrous flail, And leaps with lightsome limbs the enclosing pale. O’er field and fence he scours, and furrows wide, With wakened Comrade barking by his side; Whilst tracks of trodden grain, and sidelong hay, And broken hedge-flowers sweet, mark his impetuous way.

I acknowledge my status as a stranger: Inappropriate clothes, odd habits Out of sync with wasp and wren. I admit I don’t know how To sit still or move without purpose. I prefer books to moonlight, statuary to trees. But this lawn has been leveled for looking, So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green. Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids? My feet are the primitives here. As for the rest—ah, the air now Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing But news of a breeze.