I knew you as pain, as specific need,
as the cold thing that was foreign.

Could you enter, once again,
what’s possible, what you made?

hesitant behind a flash of doves
in a darkness where I don’t exist

How this man moves my musky hair,
liquored in his slicker and slick chair,

“He picked up
a bee!”
is what

I set out a bowl
for the pepper birds.
“Pepper birds,”

I get on
the racket bus,
and see one empty seat

Time does wonders. But should it come unjustly,
with the throb of guilt: we aren’t at home.

I am a dead man who wanders
nowhere announced

Filled by nothing other than our suffering.
Conform to us exactly!