I
It is as difficult to disentangle the train from the landscape
Which it bisects, a particolored string
Threading its way between groundswells of patterned desert,
As to follow the argument
In the book on my knees. Everything is a distraction:
A thousand butterflies above the millefleur field
A filament of music drifting up
From the town’s deep center, as the slow afternoon
Meanders toward uncertain consummations.
Now the train vanishes, pulled into the hillside
By its invisible string. The pages of the book
Flutter adios, adios, and in the pale sky
A sickle moon signals the darkness coming.
II
What am I doing here? This is not my country.
Even the sky is foreign, at home there is nothing
So unfathomable and at the same time opaque;
It is easy to get lost in it, or on one of
The many little roads that look, from here,
As if they might lead to the water.
Don’t think it is a simple matter of translation
Yesterday in the restaurant a friendly tourist
Boasted that he had come back
After twenty-five years, and found nothing changed.
Nobody contradicted him, not even
The three naughty little boys who ran barefooted past the tables
Shouting “goodbye, goodbye,” meaning, “hello, hello.”
III
The gardener does not know the name
Of that flower like a spear thrust up
Bright as arterial blood, out of a leafy scabbard;
And when he tells me this plant
Is called virgin’s tears
I do not believe him.
Even when he clasps my hand
In greeting or goodbye, the distance between us
Is greater than the spaces between the stars.
Nothing bridges it. From my house
I can see his house, the birds in cages,
But even when he tells me how to find it
The streets are without names, and I lose my way.
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