POEM WRITTEN 
AT THE ALGONQUIN HOTEL

                                        New York City

It is raining outside the window
of my hotel room    Not raining hard
but raining    Off and on I have
heard the crying of a cat    It seems to
come and go    like the sound of
the rain     Last night the hotel cat
rode up the elevator with me    and
came into my room    I let it sleep
on the foot of the bed    I hope that
is not the can I can hear    crying
Across the way    I can see a woman
and man talking out on the fire escape
Perhaps they have been drawn
outside by the rain    perhaps now
they will be able to settle their differences.

From THE COPENHAGEN SONNETS 

I

Two bees, copulating, tumbled from the sky
into my lap, and rolled to the grass,
humming. Brief little stutterings
of his wings helped him to mount her

where she waited, her hard furred rump held 
in the air for him. He zeroed in,
zeroed in, and, in unison, they floated
a little above the earth, at my shoe-tops.

When it was over, they separated mid-air;
in looping turns, the female flew away,
to look after the species, while the male
stayed behind, lazily circling the scene

of their lovemaking, the grass, the air
now sweet with the honey of future days.

II

Our way into Helsignor lay barred. Just
a flimsy reproach to our faults
which we knew would come. A charwoman
ignored us. No one else came, though we

had paid for our crossing. Where we stood,
we could hear the rixdollar clink of
porcelain cups and saucers inside
the darkened lure of the castle, beyond

its decorous, ill-lit entryway. And
I remembered navigating the concrete
labyrinth of some airport parking garage,
one crossbar after another, and Seamus saying,

What a sense of gratitude one always feels
when the bar lifts. 

III

One of the art students from the academy
painted at his rustic easel in
the Rembrandt room, copying Lucretia.
He had roughed in the dire sway

of her head, dark undercoat of her garments,
umbers and burgundies verging on tulle,
gold silk, bright-deep blue brocade,
and, at her breast, the wound

still to come – dishonored by Sextus,
she bared this shame before her father and
his court, then turned toward us.
Working quickly, but thoughtfully,

the finely tapered brush held lightly in his hand,
the knife with grim purpose in hers.

* * *
 

Old words worn away at the corner
of rue Paulin-Caphal,
their ghostly imprint in the stone murmuring
of forgotten moments. The past
is a wind always blowing, lifting our collars,
our hair, cooling us with the breath
of caves, wearing away at the signs
posted at intersections, until the way
is marked with hieroglyphs, decipherable
through rubbings – stone to paper, paper to skin.
As we go, reading our palms
under the dark arcades.

IRKUTSK STATION
 

A woman’s upturned face, framed
by my window,
like a photograph found at auction.

Behind her on the platform,
a circle of men turned inward, linked
by a chain, a common thought.

The woman asks nothing
of me. She only looks.
Like a face in a photograph.

She may have no relation to the men
turned inward, standing behind.
But I see them there

Together on the platform.
The way a photograph sees.
Here we are. Here we are.