What I remember is a bridge, a waffle, a prediction,
a piece of pizza, an ATM, a menu in Flemish, the river (a
river) and now so many years later:

Tram number ninety-two.
Cobblestones, insipid dampness and an opaque sky,
more cobblestones, some closed museums,
healthy-looking individuals behind glass all working silently
on the second level of the public library

which I was kicked out of.
(Exclusivity.) The soft face of a girl
admiring my Nikon FM2 (in French),
the fact that we could have talked
or walked or shopped or eaten together
but didn’t and then it was over.
She disappeared beyond the Swatch store.

And back near Ma Campagne,
these beautiful floors. The sound of a decade dissolving
what we were then into what we’ve become,
and a silence that is still the same.
Against the wall, a large cat stares
blankly, or intently,
I can’t tell which.

The cat has buried her nose in my fleece bathrobe. Breathing is difficult, but she doesn’t remove her face and we stay like that, and the room is silent.

Outside, a truck pushes through the snow. I wonder if it’s UPS, suddenly remember I’m expecting two packages. Face lotion, discounted. A travel towel.

This is the last night with the cat. The house gets emptier every day. Why don’t we watch a Japanese film? I suggest. Her face is near my elbow. People are out on the street, closing doors, shoveling, yelling at dogs.

There’s also an airplane passing over the neighborhood. No, two. One of them might be going to France by way of Canada, in which case you might be on it, eating grapes.

The cat’s right ear is cold and she’s kind of wheezing. She hates being alone. I understand. The silence becomes a swimming pool and we’re floating in the sitting position. Soon, broccoli.

Maybe we’ll find a mouse tonight. Maybe Paris will be unseasonably warm and when you get there you can throw out your hat and when you order espresso, they’ll serve it with a lemon rind. Good things repeat. Some children are squealing upstairs, and the Christmas tree is still alive.

an excerpt, by E. Barrett

The day starts and stops, a change takes place, and
stars come out in their underwear, countermured with
diamond. It’s stupid and marvelous, like a play written
by a horse: hoof mark, hoof mark, straw — don’t step
in Act Two. Ripeness is all we get? That doesn’t sound
right: you love it, the it you see and the it you know is
in there. And you want it to love you back with all the
deliciousness and sorrow of a natural law that has no
words for its corollaries and terms shadowed on the
hillside, washed in the apples.

by Mark Strand

One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear …
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?

by J.L. Borges

We said goodbye on a corner in Once. From the other sidewalk I turned to look back; you too had turned, and you waved goodbye to me.

A river of vehicles and people were flowing between us. It was five o’clock on an ordinary afternoon. How was I to know that that river was Acheron the doleful, the insuperable?

We did not see each other again, and a year later you were dead.

And now I seek out that memory and look at it, and I think it was false, and that behind that trivial farewell was infinite separation.

Last night I stayed in after dinner and reread, in order to understand these things, the last teaching Plato put in his master’s mouth. I read that the soul may escape when the flesh dies.

And now I do not know whether the truth is in the ominous subsequent interpretation, or in the unsuspecting farewell.

For if souls do not die, it is right that we should not make much of saying goodbye.

To say goodbye to each other is to deny separation. It is like saying “today we play at separating, but we will see each other tomorrow.” Man invented farewells because he somehow knows he is immortal, even though he may seem gratuitous and ephemeral.

Sometime, Delia, we will take up again – beside what river? – this uncertain dialogue, and we will ask each other if ever, in a city lost on a plain, we were Borges and Delia.

by Lingayen Beach, 1977

I don’t tell lies. Memory’s more
beautiful than truth. So I say,
the air was blossoming jasmine trees
and smoke. And it’s true.
Clothes boiled in tin tubs. A child,
I watched my uncle splinter
arms of bamboo, his dark skin a blur
in steamy drizzle. A woman
with the burning end of a cigarette
turned inside her lips. Her smile,
a mouth of pink gums squeezed
together. Mornings, my brother and I
raced down the soft belly of the beach,
climbed palm trees—grasping circular rungs
like a throat—to see coconuts churning
in the surf; the skeleton of a torn-down
fighter plane, its snapped propellers,
dented cockpit; fire holes on the beach
where my family came down at night
Dad drank San Miguels and never quit
talking. Filipinos laughed at him.
Mom sat, embarrassed, in the sand.
My cousins, brother, and I stripped cane.
The story ends there for children,
but you wait in bed to hear the rest—
how the air was steam, mosquito incense.
Auntie Marietta set the table. Lanterns
turned her skin red/blue.
I sat in the clubhouse watching
old men play pool till one said
I look old enough to kiss.

[Written by my friend N. Scott]

Our office stands on wooden stilts,

overlooking a small lot of gently used cars.

All were garaged—and are one-owner vehicles,

if anyone asks.

At lunch we eat pulled pork sandwiches with beans,

listening to Rodney Dangerfield rant about the

respect we want more than money.

And Alonzo’s laughter puts pirates to shame.

Every night, the dark flash
of one elusive mouse across the living room floor.
There is no sense in a hunt, a capture,
a slaughter or release; just go in peace,
I say, and he/she winks at me,
crawls into a backpack against the wall.
It’s good to make new friends in fall.

Everything is still, and turquoise, and red.
The ghost of my grandmother’s dead
cousin smiles (she always loved
those colors) and
instead

of laughter, a humming overtakes the house.
Suddenly this pattern on the rug
resembles coats of arms,
thousands of them
shaped like
the crux

I saw and saw again in South America and see still
while sleeping, skies of unconsciousness
hovering above. And I’ll see this until
the dream displaces the real
memory, which happens
occasionally
they say

(fascinating how the night dissolves to the day.)
When I wake I’m still several oceans away.
And the quiet house hums and the
wet socks sway. It’s September
again, I remembered
today.

Rode the subway with my landlord today.
As if on a motorboat, as if on a wide sea.

He spoke of cold things: divorce, immigration,
his voice rising in waves over the swelled train tracks

but I was thinking about summer, how fast it goes,
how the baseball field stays fluorescent even at night.

And all the commuters looked like pretty statues,
even the woman flashing a grimace as she stared at us,

even the old men, even the kids.
Someday it will be difficult to remember

even this moment, the way the train flew through tunnels
without listening to our lamentations, without offering remorse.