Kraków was overcast that morning, the hills steamed.
It was raining in Munich, in valleys the Alps
lay hidden and heavy as stones.

My favorite poets
never met
They lived in different countries

You like leafing through biographies
There you’re in another life
How strange, how startling

The blackened river ran through the park.
Past there, the numb gardens
were hemmed by thick braids of hedges.

In the Pare de Saint Cloud, birds sang.
Alone in that vast narcissistic forest
overlooking Paris,

A fence. Chestnut trees. Bindweed. God.
A spider web, the hiding place
of first cause, and the thick grass:

That country, like depression, will steal
your youth and turn it into a codeword,
will take your rapture and give grief;

Night, an alien city, I roamed
a street with no name.
Stone steps submerged me deeper

Messengers, panting, die as they run,
cables rush out, candles burning with quick crimson flames,
colonels dozing in carriages faster than light,