patterns of slowly slipping
monuments into rhythmless
jumble of rocks
patter pitter beyond
a border unmarked
for faraway bells
ringing unknown where

---

The Hidden One

Again, I was beginning . . .

Apparently, I’ve committed myself to a course of action.

Our meetings are already ritualized now.
I come to this room and inscribe a sequence of lines whose meaning is affection,
but at the last moment it always ducks away,
slips quietly into disrepair where it joylessly empties itself,
the pointless ashes scattered at sea.

I put down the vision that floats in a separate space.
I follow the man without a face who disappeared in a space between the buildings.
I pretend not to care where this is leading.
I pretend it does not disgust me.
I pretend not to be terrified of my disgust.
Does it show in my face?

It’s cold this way. Affectionate, but the structure is cold.
Sad and lovely like an indifferent river at night.
Answers without a question.

I want to try again.
I want to invest my voice with a sincerity that convinces,
that connects viewer to object – eliminate the peripheral.
It is not completely impossible.

Are there people who do not deserve the evening?
Do I know them?
And are there others grooming the agonies of failure?

The old man who owns the house at the end has gone.
The sunset exploded but either he did not notice,
or he enjoyed this spectacular beauty nonchalantly.

Now everyone was going home and the fear welcomes them.
The man in the black suit was going . . .
going where?
His walk had more of time than distance in it.
He remembered he was going somewhere he did not want to be found.
He was one of those men who appear motionless in supermarkets,
who can no longer bear to look at the shopping carts,
no longer trying to be nice to themselves,
shrieking at vacant gestures,
restricted property,
one formalizing task after another.

By dint of concentration, we hold a life together,
we listen to music for a while,
and an instant later it goes.

Today I performed a simple experiment:
I started to wander about aimlessly-
one neutral observer standing still.
Visible through a window,
the man in black appeared far away-
a man inside while outside a field of vision.
The experiment broke down, however.
It produced startling symmetries and rhythms,
but it revealed only its own trembling reflection.

And the man?
He just kept moving,
continuing to stagger along the streets and sidewalks,
picking up lost scraps of paper with a pointed stick.
He headed south on the dark gray waves-
and one night turns sharp behind the border of vanity-
into the gorgeous and violent nothing.

There she waits with the nervous eyes that almost used to be beautiful.

It is in the structure that I find an ending neither of us had planned-
for this puts things so much more succinctly than I ever could have.

Yet I heard myself saying, “I want more. I’d like to see you under different circumstances.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” She was miserable. “I thought this was just going to be.”

But she is patient, of course. She tells me to relax.

Slowly I am taken in by an ending I could imagine she wishes was still with me.

From across the room he sees this expression.

He doesn’t even know that it is worse than that,
that it is all gone from everything,
especially the subtler versions
which shall matter no more.

---