Climb down, said the angel of the Lord
in banquet-waitress raiment (black skirt, white shirt)
to the plastic pair.

Let the glass we smash be doubt,
the wine free will,
the bouquet, a mosaic of mercies.

At my wedding, my father, ten years dead,
practices what Isaac Babel called
              the “genre of silence”—that is,

I am doubting the existence of Schubert. 
Pressed, I used to admit this much:
Schubert was there,

This is one of several works paying homage to your memory.
In prior compositions, a chain of association began and ended
at your face. Here your negligent features are just a link—just

Wind shrieked a desperate warning. Then the train—shaft
of iron!—running right through me! I slammed the book on
my finger.

Do you mock me, Musil?
I have not reach you, yet
—nor you me. Across the bedroom, we have whiled

There were lies. Did you know, and then forget
if there was a lie in the peach orchard? There was the lie
a saxophone riffed on a storm-thick summer sky,

But look, there—who is that one, hurrying
Around the corner, swallowed by the crowd?
Already his face is vague—the only thing