Many years later while listening to Schubert at night and tasting salt on his lips,

he yearns to be at that past shoreline again, where salt, like laughter in the air, was everywhere:

within, without. It laid its hands over them as they huddled in the hull-shade, away from an unrelenting sun,

and left white sweaty maps he carried (along with old songs made new) for a night or so, on his back into this arcless journey.

Schubert, salt, songs, shoreline.

The morning he was 23, he woke Weeping like a timid prophet Into his beard, the stink of self pity Buzzing like a curtain of flies Around him.

The haloed sacredness That only the young and inexperienced Can attribute to infatuation gone south, He had imbibed in full.

And the outskirts of Grief, which he thought were unreachable, Were fast approaching even as he stood In front of the mirror to shave off Ratty two months long face-fur At three in the afternoon.

Spring was around the corner Even if the trees were bare. There were still tears to be shed, Standing over dandelion heads Sprouting among cracked sidewalks. But the main body of the deluge Had passed, and suffering settled Like alluvium.

He will soon be freed Of the clutching pain, even if He doesn’t see this in his martyred state. He will enter the romantic city again Even as he loudly proclaims to be done with All that catastrophic foolishness. He will be Humbled, he will be made to beg for tears, He will rise with joy, he will write love poems, He will live.

On being asked to describe the 23rd, in the 28th year