No one knew her real name, but she appeared to be Greek.
She posed nude for painters, when she could find them.
She could slap hard enough to draw blood.

You came one day and
as usual in such matters
significance filled everything—

… garroting apple and oak, broken off, no longer keeping
the wild estate;
late spring, northern embroidery; lilies shaped like

Trying to prove the purity of gold,
Archimedes learned how in the bath;
his knees and shanks and soapy water told

What does he have to give? No less space
than usual opens above him,
outward to the Van Allen Belts and beyond,

In the old days there were characters
and settings: if you wrote snow,
you could see wetness and whiteness

The new theory of the universe predicts,
for instance, gravity. And history. It is correct.
It is complex. There are men too eager to know,

Because so much consequential thinking
happens in the rain. A steady mist
to recall departures, a bitter downpour

The man wearing the tailored suit, casually
Overdressed: in the midst of this confusion
He loses track (though not direction, bearing,

Already the butterflies yellow with August
And the Jersey shore piled with houses
There are train whistles in the distance