A time comes of silence and secret Sargassos,
the desolation of tourists and billboards,
a time of seamless ennui:

My mind long gone, having forgot to shut the body
             off, I will lie in some spare room,
some former nursery, entranced by waiting for death

Who can't but love a soldier wearing mums
In his helmet? A colossal private
Produced a flask of something and toasted

Supine on a gurney below the Acropolis tacked
to the ceiling, my right leg slowly turning
cement, I'm an accidental artifact of Pompeii

Sunlight sang through the chick door's crack.
   And I heard her words,
         yet chose not to wake my brother,

He waited for her the last time
in the Cafe Eichberger, at their table:
walls the color of chocolate, tiles worn

You could be turning it in your fingers like a planet.
A knife would do, if you're good with knives,
bracing the hard fruit in your slender hand;

Though the rest of us remains closed, tired,
we go on hoping for what we know,
the essence of it enclosed in a dream—

His cleaned-out body—and laid before it
a thousand of bread, beer, oxen, fowl,
and every good thing. His gratitude

No wonder the Antwerp teashops
refuse him—except with a heel of bread
through the back door. Held out