—Rue Pernety, Paris

First the crying is a jagged graph,
direct response to the pain: One. Two. Three.
Four. Five, but the final number never
known. When the blows stop, 
it hollows—a long-voweled moan, chant
of a child lost in a public place. Then a cry
almost private: gathered, guttural,
having to do more with rage than loss of love,
aimed at whatever force put him here—with her.
Then, at the end, a sound I first mistook for doves.