Ten or so years ago, someone had bought this book of poems, pristine, smelling of fresh paper, new bindings, and printer's ink. It was in a city in a neighboring country. Early summer, late night. Perhaps in those northern latitudes there was still snow on the ground, perhaps he was lonely.

Perhaps he went into the bookstore on Bloor Street called Bookcity -

I imagine a city in which the buildings are constructed out of books, and the streets are paved with them, it will be a city with no tall buildings, it will be a city where heights are accessible only via imagination, a city with a giddy Icarus as its emblem, I have many such cities within me, where I add, much more slowly now, new cities to these older cities

• seeking solace, the dull radiation put out by reading bodies, and the diffuse shadows they throw across the page. He might have read this book till it was closing time, he might have read memories rustling like iridescent maple leaves in the mists, he might have called out her name, the lover for whom he had been looking for in those other rooms, other bodies, other lovers.

He must have run out of time, he must have run out of the store as it was shuttered for the night clutching this book of poems I now hold open in my hand, to read

The memories of long love Gather like drifting snow, Poignant as the mandarin ducks Who float side by side in sleep

before I nestle, and spoon your dozing body.