talking to a man outside.
My elbow’s
on the sill. The carved
acanthus leaves
behind me wheeze
with dust.
Some other leaves
crush
underneath his shoes
flat on the canvas
(you can’t hear it of course).
The artist has two guises
in one time
and so must I.
Pretend a 16-wheeler
booms
past just out of frame,
rattling long emptiness
on our moot commune.
Then say I know this man:
(I, she) Where the dust of the day
meets the dust of the night.
(He) Don’t be decadent.
(I, she) Right.
In the room behind me, in
the real house I stand in,
a voice rises and falls
in paints,
separates in parts:
somebody—
it’s that man
pitched back to life,
I can
tell by his eyes
(which you’ll never see—
they’re shaded
in, averted, as if autistic,
and they’re dead.
2
But he’s still playing
rending variations on a tune
after cicadas,
a summer’s ending,
the summer’s ending,
that summer’s ending.
I take it up, humming,
or have taken it up.
He stands before me. But I
don’t listen. Why
am I humming?
I’m humming.
And
never having heard
my voice from a distance
I turn my ear
softly
back into the picture
acritically. Do I like
what I hear?
Shall I hum? Or sing
out clear?