I recall everything, but more than all, Words being nothing now, an ease that ever Remembers her to my unfailing fever, How she came forward to me, letting fall Lamplight upon her dress till every small Motion made visible seemed no mere endeavor Of body to articulate its offer, But more a grace won by the way from all Striving in what is difficult, from all Losses, so that she moved to discover A practice of blood, as the gulls hover, Winged with their life, above the harbor wall, Tracing inflected silence in the tall Air with a tilt of mastery and quiver Against the light, as the light fell to favor Her coming forth; this chiefly I recall.

It is part of pride, guiding the hand At the paino in the splash and the passage Of sacred dolphins, making numbers human By sheer extravagance that can command Pythagorean heavens to spell their message Of some unlooked-for peace, out of the common; Taking no thought at all that man and woman, Lost in the trance of lamplight, felt the presage Of the unbidden terror and bone hand Of gracelessness, and the unspoken omen That yet shall render all, by its first usage, Speechless, inept, and totally unmanned

[1] A girl swaddled in winter gear Crawls around the table where He sits and gobbles sonnets, Even as he knows very well that Lines don't show their true face If run past quickly, post haste, Or when deployed without grace.

Yet he is like that babe With her need to touch everything And be touched by everything, To rediscover again the border where The self ends and the world begins.

[2] The girl stands up, makes her Red-haired mother take off her Goose down armor, and then Runs about the room gurgling in Joy, making sounds with meanings She is not aware of: book, look. And then she accidentally touches His leg with her palm and grins.

At the sight of her perfect but tiny chubby hands and feet, He quivers as a stray page might Riding about on the wind's back.

There was a time when he once bought books solely on the criteria of their weight. In that fashion he could get economies of scale, a cheaper cost per page.

Now his traveling portmanteau nearly full with all the books acquired on this journey, he begins to buys books for their slenderness; books of poetry mainly, books that have spines as slender as flower stalks, books like that one he had once given a woman (whose ability to quote verse had filled him with amazement) saying,

"Let this be the bouquet of wild irises that I didn't bring with me for you, this winter evening."