The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,
             a bounce here, as shimmy there, just shaking like music

left over from the night's end wafting into the avenues before sleep.
             I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singing

that line returning, New York is cold, but I like where I'm living.
             Theres music on Clinton Street all through the evening. And of course

there was music, though it was me and my incessant remembering.
             And here, now, what does one even offer?

Darling Cockroaches of the Highest Order, hard underthings
             of hard underworlds, I am utterly suspicious of advice.

What is the world like out there? Are you singing in the tunnels?

I should say nothing sometimes.
I should say Memory will leap from the mountain.

             Dearest purple spiderwort in the ditches mud, how did you do it?
Such bravery, such softness, even with all that name-calling and rage.

No one wants to be a pretty thing all the time. But no one wants to be 
             the weed. Alone in Argentina at a café, I never felt like dancing, I screwed

my face up so it said nothing and no one and never. Borges lost his sight
over years, and yet sometimes it is best to be invisible.

What is it to be seen in the right way? As who you are? A flash of color,
             a blur in the crowd,
             something spectacular but untouchable.

And now the world is gone. No more Buenos Aires or Santiago.
             No tango, no samba. No more pisco sours sweet and sticky
and piercing the head’s stubborn brick.

Mistral writes: We don't need all the things that used to give us pleasure.
             Still some dense desire, to sneak into the cities of the world

again, a window, to sit at café Tortoni and refuse an invitation
because I can. Now we endure.

Endure time, this envenomed veil of extremes—loss and grief and reckoning.

Mistral writes: I killed a woman in me: one I did not love. But I do not want to kill
             that longing woman in me. I love her and I want her to go on longing

until it drives her mad, that longing, until her desire is something

like a blazing flower, a tree shaking off
             the torrents of rain as if it is simply making music.