Last night with our minds still in cold April
in the late evening we watched the river
heavy with the hard rains of the recent spring

When you were born
I was a small child in a bad time
and even if somebody had brought me news of you
I might not have believed them

Once a child's poem began a pond of time
what followed must have flowed from what a child

 When they start to wear your clothes
do their dreams become more like yours
who do they look like

It is said that after he was seventy
Ingres returned to the self-portrait
he had painted at twenty-four and he

Wherever I look you are islands
a constellation of flowers breathing on the sea
deep-forested islands mountainous and fragrant

It is nothing new
for horses to be harnessed to hemispheres
it has happened at intervals

It was that other land that we
could believe in for a long time
knowing that it used to be there

Look at you bringing 
Your children up just as formerly 
And look at me back again 

How did someone come at last to the word for patience
and know that it was the right word or patience