The woman is preparing her body for sleep.
She hangs the hair forward
and it almost touches her feet.

What false color, a fickle color, whatever color will do.
Point us at a sunset,
and we are golden. Open us to the world, and we are blue.

Marley was rocking on the transport’s stereo
and the beauty was humming the choruses quietly.
I could see where the lights on the planes of her cheek

I’m singing a song for the romeos
I wore for ten years on my front stoop in the North Side,
and for the fat belly I carried

It could happen again. It will.
But this time the geography will be more final,
more certain of the rain and its echo

Although I was tenacious, I never learned
  the wisdom and will of tenacity;
Although I was persistent, and praised for persistence,

Look, Mitterand baby, your telegram
of condolence to Yves
Montand tells it like it is

In my arms, lilacs like a former lover—
no heartbeat, no elevator.
The garden pantomimes its tactics. Now

The strong horseshoe shape of a horse’s mouth
Of his teeth, set that way of a suitcase handle

And the way a bit, in just that way, pulls him:

The whale eye of the sun in the thin gray overcast,
walleye of a gray wall of animal
washed ashore