“Everything changes but the avant-garde.” —Paul Valéry

A few words are left us from the beginning. Thank you, God, for allowing me a little to think again this morning.

Touch my face, touch this scarred heart.

Here, touch this upturned face as wind as light.

So they labored for three or four decades to turn the perfectly harmless word quietude into a pejorative sneer.

Call no man happy until he has passed, beyond pain, the boundary of this life.

We were standing alone at the window when it started to rain and Schumann quietly.

That imbecilic plastic hive of evil—

To

night, and you turned

and said, although you were not there, Night.

What do we know but this world.

And although I could not speak, I answered.

Note: Borrowed from the Ploughshares's Winter 2006-2007 issue, this poem perfectly bookends an year that began with this translation of a song, which was this year's first post.