Dear Language, I don’t Love you as much as I love this world.

Dear Language, you clothe My nakedness only to reveal Other kinds of nakedness.

Dear Language, I must tell You that there are days when I can do perfectly without you.

Dear Language, I like you When you are lean & threadbare, With ravenously shining eyes.

Dear Language, if you
Didn’t exist, would I Have invented you?

Dear Language, I hurl You occasionally at the yawing Gulf that separates you and me.

[1]

It is an hour or two after Midnight. And I am Twenty-seven years old,

So announces the calendar Keeper who resides Under my skin & scalp.

And the tongue of a bell That hangs from the rafters Of my heart seems to grow

Heavy with all these years Of solitude. It begins to move, As if to toll, as if to mark

Off the year that has Been just done, with all That I did and didn’t do.

This is perhaps how The ability to comprehend Time’s account books -

Those sky-exposed Element-flayed logs On forest floors -

Comes. Something is Happening now. And the green radiance

Of the clock’s dial Is its only witness. It is an hour or so

After midnight. I am Twenty seven now. And Understanding, when Will you come?

[2]

As you have given This March day both Light and rain, Magnolias at my window Astonishment At the end of another winter, Music for these long Cloud-dark afternoon hours And air for my land-locked Breath to echo the sea,

Give these hands too A measure of grace As they move Over this page To write Thank you.

(For Adam Zagajewski)

I lean forward in my chair And close my eyes, as if I were sitting in a pew, and Listen closely to the songs Made by this palmist with An accent, for these times.

He sings of having seen much: The face of Caravaggio’s crucified Christ, roofless temples in Sicily, Lonely subways of great cities Between which he had ceaselessly Traveled in trains with non talking Compartments, seeking balance, After being exiled from those Still sweet, still distinct, long streets Of his youth. He sings of friends Who had sailed away on yachts, Leaving testimonies behind them Of sins and signs they have seen, And joy felt, and suffering endured.

As he concludes, he signs Of how and why we should praise The mutilated world. And somewhere behind me, In the audience, just then, A baby begins to cry, as if In complete understanding.