Two young boys return After playing (explorers? Cops and robbers?) in

The wood lot and brambles Of the backyard, bare feet Covered with red clay

And laughter streaming Off their faces like rain That is falling into this

Evening’s sunlight. Their clothes hug Their young bodies,

Which are free, mostly, Of this tormenting Desire and striving,

Which has taken Root in mine. Yet the wheel of

Suffering has been Set in motion even In their case, even as

They whoop in delight When they score A direct hit with

A frayed tennis ball At the little bronze Buddha Put under that sturdy

Oak by the Zen meditator Next door. How much Metta do we all need

Here, O Enlightened One, You who have broken The rafters and the ridge

Pole of trishna, the house Builder, and have taught Men to bounce suffering

Off themselves, like this Muddy tennis ball!

After wandering around, freezing the images like above (others here ) in pixels, I returned home, with an ache that I attempted to pin down on page. Failing which I salvaged these older words from the notebook in which I scribble.

[A] Because I have no friends or Many passions left that cause Men to howl at that high Inaudible pitch, out of hunger, Out of wanting, and not getting enough –

With passion nothing can be Enough, nothing can be enough –

I crack open this notebook, and try Again this morning to befriend

The line.

[B] How bruised are The faces of camellias This morning!

Their former lover - Ol’ Jack Frost – must have Returned last night with His deathcold hands.

[C] I have crossed over many years ago. I have eaten from a different bread Many years now. For many years now I have Had no home.

The black water glitters in the winter sun. These feet (look like mine) pace the sea walls Facing the country in which I loved your Ruminative, antimony laced eyes. They won’t Recognize me, I won’t recognize your voice, Won’t turn around if you call my name in one of Those alleys, where acrid bonfires now efface My name painted on the walls with This continuous ash of exile.

[D] Poem for the unknown woman who has been sitting opposite my desk at the library for the whole of last week

Was the title I gave to this abandoned poem when I began writing it many weeks ago, and then the days were still as lonely, as endless as today.

One notices the familiar objects in the background, or is that objects in the background soon seem familiar, just like those cracks running across the wall opposite the loo, shadows of curtains that fall across the bed every morning, or this face I see when I look up from a book of differential equations or a volume of Keats. More than anything it is these things that are carried to sleep, these static tableaux of days, which perhaps in those unfettered lands, find wings.

So I began writing down the first stanza, adding descriptions from the top – I could have also begun from the bottom (red shoes) with no loss of logical consistency, then why did I begin at the top? - charcoal hair cut short, eyes of quartz, if you are following me so far I am attempting to show you a portrait of her in words, and now I say perhaps you should look at the face of Anna Akhmatova – Anna because I am feeding from her hard bread now. Listen to her now:

And the miraculous comes so close to the ruined dirty houses - something not known to anyone at all, but wild in our breast for centuries.

And it perhaps sounds even better in Russian - to see where I was going with no great success. I also wrote

She holds papers in her hands and light filters through her wrists – startling white skin, speckled with moles. These for me are one of the greatest enigmas, one of the greatest wonders, the wrists of women. I stand transfixed before icons staring at the wrists of Santa Maria holding the baby; I go through cafes and bars looking at wrists holding up glasses, cups, libations etc. Also I have read in a book on body language – when one can’t master one language, such as this, one becomes a dilettante – that being shown wrists, those vulnerable parts of the anatomy, those parts where one comes closest to feeling the circling blood, is show an expression of intention. So should I ignore the ominous signs proclaiming ‘Silence’ that are hung on the walls, and talk to her? Maybe ask her name? Or maybe tell her mine?