The ice again in my sleep it was following someone
   it thought was me in the dark and I recognized its white 
                                                                                            tongue

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

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

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

Long after Ovid’s story of Philomela
   has gone out of fashion and after the testimonials
of Hafiz and Keats have been smothered in comment

You were always a stray and grating
Stiff-necked lot, I am sure of it; graceless,
And nothing loose about your hands.

I remember how I would say, “I will gather 
These pieces together, 
Any minute now I will make 

A sentence continues after thirty years
it wakes in the silence of the same room
the words that come to it after the long comma

Turning climbing slowly in late spring among
black trunks of high pines
talking of our lives few white words flying

With the birds I suppose there is
small comparison no holding
up of what may be remembered