Train tracks curve into the rain And their end stands the flower That I handed to you in a distant fall. Since then I have been divided into days And nights, and rain’s persistent music Always shrouds my distant city.

Stopping on bridges spanning this city Today I watch it fall as it falls always, this rain. What do you play on the radio now? What music Has taken my seat? And at your window what flower Blooms, under my chimes? Those days Spent with you, remain hidden in bureaus, except in fall

When maple trees, for days seem to reenact our fall From love or what passed for it, in all those cities Spread across disparate continents and days. Only then I reread your letters: this written to rain, This one written, you said, in the shade of a flower, And this just after you had stopped spinning to music.

Yesterday I was listening to Bach’s music, Fugues you felt were too mournful for a happy fall. I gave you his tapes instead of flowers As I left, after that short visit to your city, Driving away into heavy rain. I must tell you I have been driving for days

And still there is no clarity about those days We spent together. So I keep taking flowers To this high grave, to this coffin of rain, Which holds all the crazy plans we made that fall. Now, I will not visit those mountain cities. Now, I will not listen to prayer flags’ music.

But this is not what I constantly miss; it is music Of your laughter echoing down corridors of days. So what remains to be said of this city In which you are absent? I see no flowers. It is that season again: fall. Cellos fill with rain.

Ominous radio silence. No music In these dark rooms. And today No tears. Only rain, only rain.

<i>Notes:
This poem was begun years ago, when the obsessiveness of a sestina seemed appropriate for the welter of emotions I was then enduring. Perhaps those emotions weren’t as intense as I imagined them to be, or perhaps they were too overpowering, for me to sit down and write verse. So this poem had to wait till today, for some kind of completion, when an early morning thunderstorm woke me up to the dialect of rain flowing through gutters.