Any clear thing that blinds us with surprise - Robert Lowell

In a bole of burnished coppe,r I lean my face against the parchment Of beech, and think distant thoughts Of America, or rather the maps That stand for America - one of which I opened at the tail end of a winter, Shivering mute - a tracery of veins On the prairie of a waist, and cities Dotting distances, like moles along The gulf of a sleeping throat.

Now I find myself completely lost (or more Precisely at a loss) in this mapped America. Memories, and the labels that I applied to them have gone awry like a scrim of puddling rain drops Tell me, do the beeches remember, later, these leaves they shed like A trail of hot tears? Tell me, do you remember how I mapped you, blinded & blind, in that far away night, Adrienne?