There are many facts in the world.
Most are passengers, but some
Drive the car.

Sitting down, unfolding
the paper, without looking
you raise the light toward the pipe.

tonight I was reminded of our house in England,
the little record player that always skipped.
Our dozen records seemed such a luxury, although

would you mind very much if I came home with you?
Yes, mother, we’ll go home now.

But in a poem we can do anything we want.
Look how easy it is to add on rooms, to multiply

The light of the moment becoming a memory—
that was their subject: as if the present
could be haunted by its own nostalgia.

Because so much consequential thinking
happens in the rain. A steady mist
to recall departures, a bitter downpour

The war is over.
The builders come:
they build doors with archways; the ceilings are high

Drones out brittle, weary invocations, the certainty
                                      of fruit now distant as the first word
On God’s tongue. Such disarray. So much leaf-rot,

Noise is relative, too, like space
and time. For fish, who live packed
in water, the massive crash of a leaf