Nightsinging: Five Poems

I. CLARITIES OF THE NON-EXISTENT

To have loved the way it happens in the emptiness of late afternoon; to lean back and conceive of a journey leaving behind no trace of itself; to look out from the house and see a figure leaning forward as if into the wind although there is no wind; to see the hats of those in town, discarded in moments of passion, scattered over the ground although one cannot see the ground. All this in the vague, yellowing light that lowers itself in the hour before dark; none of it of value except for the pleasure it gives, enlarging an instant and finally making it seem as if it were true. And years later to come upon the same scene—the figure leaning into the same wind, the same hats scattered over the same ground that one cannot see.