Black bars expanding
      over an atomic-yellow ground — feelers retracted —
the monarch lay flat on the street

Then two juncoes trapped in the house this morning.
  The house like a head with nothing inside.
The voice says: come in.

Sound rises. That is a law. I live in this law. I do not
                        want to make anything
                        that rises. These words

  Is it because of history or is it because of matter,
mother Matter—the opposite of In-
  terpretation: his consort: (his purple body lies
shattered against terrible

It begins in blindness: taste of invisible ink;
black mouthful of discreet syllables,
punishable. Shrouded in touch, at the shut

When you wrote about Hotel Ikao to your mother,
eating rice and tea and tea and rice,
you were sitting again where tuners

He’s made her ordinary, spread her slim
seventeen years across this table,
measured her tight little head,

Monuments: They arrest the eye
like these twin tongues of ruddy stone
adorning Basel’s riverside.

Again this first fall weekend our children dance
(There is little dancing here without our dancers.)
They’ve returned to college, adding to the distance.