l. ARITHMETIC

The addition of solitude untrammeled,
one and more and more but always
the inner life astray,
that equation incompatibly private.

The errors unrepenting that will not
come out right.

Tautology, tautology. What I’ve said
in argument cannot be taken away.
I’ve emptied my pockets of change.

2. GEOMETRY

These great washes of episodic light
across the walls—how facile
the reduction of passage to shape, and yet.

Once when I was burning
tracks away from home on hurried legs
the city appeared to me as a collection of boxes