The Old
What is left, to distinguish it from the whole: a flying buttress in weeds next to a crumbled wall; yet there’s so much more, not seeing it as product but something else, a wave, a bird on wing from left to right across the cloud, and if you held on — to make it still — it wouldn’t be, so there.
Jocose
With each success there is another: when everything is going smoothly, when it seems the body will lift into the air, take wings, and fly, then surely something will happen to make it fall, take seed, and grow.
Debacles
A specialist in the lore of the Soviet and in the cookery of New Orleans, his father a cotton merchant, his mother a silent matriarch from whom he rebelled when he went off to school to study debacles, a fascination that combined with his brusqueness gave an intensity that allowed no flaw, and he knew women of such beauty it was a wonder he was alone, but he was, and it was rumored his dream of intelligence had driven him to a city filled with music on mild breezy days, which along with secrets is inhabited by clouds.
One
I They do that because they’re bored, you said, in reference to, and in your eyes I saw swimming a desire to leave not so much my presence, which was only a bit, but also the house, the town where nothing much happens (does it anywhere) the East, the country, and even the planet, which you said a lot of people are thinking is a mistake, what with the end in view and a lot of them already having left their bodies, the way they live. II I didn’t want to say I felt brought down by your chatter: it was Sunday morning and the clouds made it seem infinite, that it would only end with Monday and in a day or two a sunrise, which is to say change. III The sunrise, knowing now as I do that love only exists in reverie, the imagination as all there is; but even that I must do alone, since to be around you I realize the finality of your body, how it’s growing older and the only thing that makes me love it is the sun and projecting you into it, and loving that.
