Two thousand orphans, real ones and children of
Jewish deported parents, so you and your
   ill-sorted Red Cross wartime colleagues

Syllables shaped around the darkening day’s
contours. Next to armchairs, on desks, lamps
were switched on. Tires hissed softly on the damp

She was not the builder of model airplanes.
She was not the runner I never could be.
She was not the pillager of my bookshelves,

You mocked me that hot day at Carcassonne,
“We’re tourists now!” waving the green Michelin.
We’d come to meet your old pals from Tucson—

Late afternoon rain of a postponed summer:
wet streets, wet slate roofs, swish of tires, wet awnings,

“Champs Elysées of Broadway” says the awning
of the café where, every Sunday morning,
young lawyers in old jeans ripped at the knees

Reconstitute a sense to make of absence
in the still heat of noon, south, summer
where spindled years unravel and unwind,

After lunch, the Sunday strollers boil
on the pavement, two miles from Belleville,
which may be the upcoming quartier

She’s in a room full of letters, dressed in white
amidst proliferate papers, the exploded lace of sheets.
Her hair froths white, her pale eyes chill, as when I first

The streetlights bent
the sleet streams as I went
up the deserted Rue des Deux Ponts,