Barcarole
These waves
pushing out to sea,
whitecaps erupting where wind
shoves against the pulse.
Tilt of the globe,
pull of the moon
day and night, this roar
down a river valley—
all fighting in the bay.
Froth not curtains but veils
skittering over wavetops,
a surface
turquoise at first light, wrinkled slate at dusk.
*
Noon slapped the graveyard.
Sun-wracked poppies in clay pots,
a steep, dessicated rest.
Strict clock,
lopped calendar:
time in gravel dust, drawers of ash
climbing the hill behind me.
*
Where is she?
In the lines
of another student, in hers,
in memory,
in the earth.
The words change,
they are swimming in the book.
*
A room, then,
for brooding.
White work table,
drawer a box on white
wheels, gauze curtain I’d pull back to stare
at snow. Göttingen a blank
field caught in my head:
abstract uniform emptiness
where morning light would
facet each hill, shelf and intricate crevice
I couldn’t
and cannot see.
*
These leaves—
which are, he said,
grass.
Ubiquitous, democratic
hair on the graves
of young men.
Not a book but
a tonic to filter the blood—
read them,
read them in the open air every day of your life.
*
Research:
his brain a blood sponge,
a daybook, open, in the operating theater
(dead so it doesn’t matter),
the friend sifting microscope slides
as if they were his ashes.
What message,
where?
The skull coffer’s
empty. No spot in the brain
for Göttingen,
for love.
Pages turn, memory-thin—
nothing more to read.
*
A sketch of roofs
in Mediterranean light,
rapid,
tiles drying
from a winter shower,
kitchen gardens,
vines
over fences caught
in the moment and
beneath it all the abstract
planes and angles
drawing the eye
(deliberate, inevitable),
starting to reassert themselves
as the clouds clear.
*
The sea is elegy:
slap and meter of its surface,
reminding, erasing,
and the slow changes below.
What holds
erodes,
or diverges in filtered light:
coral growing skeletons,
picked bones, shells
sinking into stone.
