Last night I thought of my abandoned love
and wondered what had made us poles apart
and more aloof than fingers in a glove.
I asked myself whether it was his life
or death that opened a bracket, closed a bracket
on the years 61 and 92.
I turned to the naked wall and pulled my blanket
up to my chin, which people always do
when they can’t find the answer to a question.

In its tranquility and prickly warmth
this winter morning is a woolen mitten.
I vividly recall a placid youth,
his elbows sharply angled on the table,
an empty table in an empty kitchen.
But soon he fled the compass of his cradle:
his suitcase on the porch, his mother in a chair,
he held his cigarette with an indifferent air.

An outcast, poet of the frosty
Karelian Peninsula, he escaped its foil
and fled to Europe to meditate on mostly
unbeknownst things, such as the charcoal-oil
of those West German skies in the white season,
where, once his eyes adjusted to its white,
kilometers of crumpled Russian linen
paled by comparison. And he turned off the light.

But here I am, another spy in from the cold,
investigating angels through the wires
seven Mondays a week, forever young, red-haired,
but somewhat rusty in the spinal cord.
I set two coffee cups on a plastic tray
and shuffle to the balcony, where the organ
of icicles drips silent notes in the alley.
Who’d count on such a groggy guten Morgen.

Let’s face the present, drawing a mental line.
We both foretold this tingling in the branches,
this droning in the crusted skeleton
of ancient rail tracks, crossties’ wooden stitches,
the red, blue, purple current of the cars,
and shall I also mention honking fits
on salt and sand. Surviving this whole farce,
only music persists.

When the poet is finally left alone,
when a lover abandons love, the kettledrums
of winter clamor loudest for the one
who delays joining company with centaurs
and snow monsters. Only music pours
over my ears by way of dripping snow.
I’ve locked myself out. I shake the door.
Two shots of coffee and I’m set to go.