of Suffering, of Water —
cooling himself
in mountains streaming
sloughing another attempt
at a life beyond reason,
Just typing, she said
setting fire to his hands
the grafts will not heal,
of Poets, of Meaning —
Oppen and Lorca
Mandelstam, Crane
Neruda and Sappho
Hikmet and Lowell and Cobain,
of Knowing, of Time —
he sees her pouring
over the earth
— of Mountains Eroding.
—first line a phrase from a poem by Ilya Kaminsky, "Elegy for Jospeh Brodsky."
