271 .
If you carry the dream through the
day
a smoky donkey will start to bray
you follow the road to La Borne
those cliffs up to the left we walked
it only once
at every house a peaceful dog
signboards modest boast on every
villa
we lived in Les Mouflons ten years
apart
I didn’t understand bird talk in
those days
you hadn’t taught me the language of
bells
and all I knew was bread I clutched
it tight
the way a dying man clutches his
nurse’s thigh
this I know this won’t let me
go.
272.
I never saw you as you are
you know ‘you’ means everybody ‘I’
means nobody
language has a bigger heart than any
man
no house but now
a woman at the washing machine
she is the secret ruler of the world
unclad into the changes
fish too plentiful aquarium
always another waiting
the sun came sluggish to this table
a game out there someone else is playing
me too though I sit close-eyed
inside.
