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

Theresa used to come over every day. I’d be standing by the kitchen window and hear her cowboy boots on the walk. Then she would stand outside the door—I knew—listening for a sound inside, scratching the door with a twig, or reaching up to the handle to pull on it, softly, so no one would hear. 

It's exciting—in its lower case way. No, it pleases me enormously, to go out in the morning and see that two or three tomatoes have started turning orange-red, to see the reddened ones a little darker, a softness taking hold day by day.

    Would you start being twenty-eight in you thighs, your toes, your head?
    Would twenty-eight begin in your belly-button?

I fought all the knights, until the electricity gave out.
And that is my glory.

And so farewell to you, who will not slumber,
for all was in our words, a world of sand.