[A] Sun kissing the walls This morning reminds me Of your radiance passing Over and around me through The long hours of the night, An unhinged polestar's, whose Flashy laughter I wake to find Crystalline on the bejeweled panes.

[B] After the patter of speech When I sit in the rain Washed stillness by myself Next to a blue lake, lost in thoughts As they come up for air And ripple my skin, as your fingers Do every night awake and asleep,

I begin to hear two voices walking down The avenue of years talking like two Gravelly guitars playing an intimate riff Of inside jokes, secret nicknames, mock Serious heckling, and those shimmering Moaning notes, rich with voiceless and timeless Desire that wells from their skins each day.

I run towards them, and soon take on His face that is gazing at hers (yours) In between the pauses, and saying Without saying (listen for the sharp intake Of breath here), "Death, when you come, Trick me into your ghostly embrace with This beloved face and its breathless beauty!"

Autumn lay your mapled hands over me, and cover my pining skin
Till April with her delicate scent, douses this parched keening skin.

Night, quick, shorten your stay. And you winter, slough your white skein.
For towards paradise, I want to row her on the boat of my thrumming skin.
Hush, all you leafy orchestras of the west wind! Please stop your swishing din.
For only on tiptoe do the Beloved's fingers shyly sneak over my eager skin.
Rose of Sharon extend your ancient shade over me and my smoldering twin.
Afterwards in the markets this question, "Who has so branded your skin?"
And Sashi, who woke you up last night with the insistent whisper, "caress my skin"?
Was it the rain on the window, or she who now lives within your bombed open skin?

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.