The canvas is gone. The floor laid bare.
What is seen are remnants. No garments,
no adornments except the unfinished

Everywhere I walk I walk into my past,
as if swimming upstream. There is a chord
of melancholy in the air.

I lived for a week in the bewilderment of arrival,
and, for a week, the bewilderment of arrival
         lived in me.

They told her she came out of a hole in her mother
but really it’s impossible to believe
something so delicate could come out of something

Today the sun was shining
so my neighbor washed her nightdresses in the river—
she comes home with everything folded in a basket,

A cool wind blows on summer evenings, stirring the wheat.
The wheat bends, the leaves of the peach trees
rustle in the night ahead.

My mother made figs in wine—
poached with cloves, sometimes a few peppercorns.
Black figs, from our tree.

Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with birdcalls.

 I had left my passport at an inn we stayed at for a night or so whose name I couldn’t remember. This is how it began. The next hotel would not receive me. A beautiful hotel, in an orange grove, with a view of the sea.

Who cares if something simple happens in a complicated
manner? I could fall off a rock and only shake myself
up. There might be some very delicate maneuvers