And so he then — in the riven gleam that gave lampposts and post-
boxes their faces, their blackened
reverse-sides’ crimped shadows rippling away over snow,
climbing the lettered panes and
awnings of shop fronts like winter versions of vines, or damp
in the brick, alongside fish
merchants whose chest aprons’ waxed leather stank and shone,
who drove dish-gloved arms into blue
cisterns of carp between bouquets of horse-sized steaming
carnations that clouded the expressions
carving their faces and in the next moment gave way to new
failures of permanence: home
and that house’s goat leash, porch-lit exterior, and brain
of moths, the pasture of terra
cognita from stone lintel to garden spike, without guidance,
decorum, intent, or any
hold on north, within the boredom of errand fulfilled
over and over and the tow-cart’s
wheel a wobbling guide to humility, or proof that mechanical
time is a joyless concoction, in
the drift near an oak door’s brute weight, smelling
the brine of Mitteleurope,
by no cleric’s directive — fell, crying, intoning, I will.