It keeps my sight going, in any case, endlessly
                            across waves of pure, wedding-cake drifts.

  Where the rock divides among the mosses
    And the myrtle weaves its crown.

The natural world incinerated
To the rocks we sit on, nothing more.

Soon I was born a little past
  The celebrations on the Champ de Mars.
    Now who can recognize himself?

But words strain in her ear, take on the nature of a malevolent fable

Leonardo da Vinci thought that you must make
the conquered beaten and pale, sides of the nose
wrinkled in bridges from nostrils to eyes,

The stories I fall upon are old and distant,
not mine nor my family’s nor my culture’s.

Each day’s obits read as if there’s a war on.

The King of Denmark wore a yellow star.
French Jews paid for their own with one textile

people are laughing, people are throwing
their wine glasses against the sad fires