All the last lessons of fatigue,
Every passage naming its reprieve—
Also, the few
Commitments of the heart. I thought
I’d pass as smoothly as a hand passes
Over a globe of light
Hanging in some roadside bar,
Or over the earth on its pedestal of oak
In a library. I believed I’d take
What came, a life with no diary’s
Hieroglyphics,
Only the crooked arc of the sun.
Now, even the way I sleep speaks habit;
My body slipping into the heat,
The crumpled beds. Every voice I hear
Within my own (of the father,
The mother) remains a saying so
Lost to its history. Look
How I treated the day,
Waking listlessly beyond the pale
Of those horizons scored along another
Subtle back. And so trust
Seeps only into the most concrete
And simple acts: the fox coat, the slap,
The gin smashed against the window. Maybe
Homer had it right. A man sails
The long way home. Now,
Every new morning-after lights
Those medleyed veins of white wisteria
Strung
Above the door; no alibis survive. Half
Of the boathouse has collapsed, the shingled
Roof sloughing off its tiles—as
Even the sea sings one octave in the past.