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Yet the after is still a storm as witness bent shadbush and cord grass in stillness sand littered with the smallest of fragments whether shell or bone That city we are far from is still frozen, still in ruins (except its symmetries be renewed by sleep, its slant colors redeemed) Nothing has changed but its name and the air that it breathes There’s still no truth in making sense while the ash settles, so fine that planes keep falling from the sky And the name once again to be the old one Saint Something, Saint Gesture, Saint Entirely the Same as if nothing or no one had been nameless in the interim or as if still could be placed beside storm that simply, as in a poem Have you heard the angels with sexed tongues, met the blind boy who could see with his skin, his body curled inward like a phrase, like an after in stillness or a letter erased Have you seen what’s written on him as question to an answer or calendar out of phase Add up the number of such days Add illness and lilt as formed on the tongue Add that scene identical with its negative, that sentence which refuses to speak, present which cannot be found