Return

I went back to the city
we visited, to
the restaurant that
we ate in and to the
bar where we saw
the twilight fade
from blue to green
to black, and I
stood outside the
hotel we returned to
in the noisy night
with the sleepless
doorman always reading
a hardboiled crime novel,

and he was not there,
and after hours the city
convulsed with ugliness,
helicopters pulsing over
head to keep the crowds
of tourists at bay,
and at the bar the
crowd was not so nice,
and in the restaurant
I tried to find in that
evening’s diners some
flash of your hair or
our hands across the
table, but instead I
could only catch my
reflection in the smoky
mirror, blurred and only
apparently mine when he
bent as I did to finish
the meal, which tasted
of nothing, not even
the memory of what it
once was.