Their footsteps formed the paisley when Parvati, angry 
        after a quarrel, ran away from Shiva. He eventually 
        caught up with her. To commemorate their reunion, he 

The trees were soon hushed in the resonance
of darkest emerald as we rushed by
on 322, that route which took us from

“Each ray of sunshine is eight minutes old,”
Serge told me in New York one December
night. “So when one looks at the sky, one sees

Who could find words, even in free-running prose,
To describe the wounds I saw, in all their horror—
Telling it over as many times as you choose,

Foreskin. A default setting.

In a city where I once lived, for many years
an old man sat on his doorstep, in his hand
a brown facecloth, which he turned
over and over, smoothed out

It begins in the back of the head,
gathering force like the strangler’s
mop in Slam sweeping across the floor.

It is the tenderness you feel you know
You may have had the tenderness you miss.
Still in the mask you wear your tongue can go

Even in sleep your shadow watches, me 
Your whisper rustles through the sleeping room 
As though you moved in silks. Why keep on trying? 

You stand in the first dumbness of the snow
        As finely, the gauze drop in pantomime,
        All detail fades upon your startled face