Lemnos, you harbor me, moon-mountained
   and reticent, motionless in flux.
Dusk festers too long in the distance,

Memory brings us back to such a place—
the rows of photinia, each leaf a red flame
(blood-tinged, almost) violent in sunlight,

Get old enough so you won't have much to fear.
By then, the music plays inside your head
and everything beautiful must be learned by ear.

We live in the heart of what can't be said.
These messages we are dying to deliver, to whisper
to you, reader, you beloved, you nations of the dead

Wherefore the cutworm, that consumeth not what he
   destroys,
that sunders below the leaf, that razes at the spindle,

From its crane arm, the massive klieg lamp cast
a notice to the church's tile roof.
The brownstone block with its plywood eyelids

The old man is back.
The house reeks of bacon.
The Jews next door

was first performed in 1703, shortly after
the deaths that stirred Chikamatsu Monzaemon
to write his drama. Sometimes criticized

For Jews, the Cossacks are always coming.
Therefore I think the sunspot on my arm
is melanoma. Therefore I celebrate

When the dawn is splashed with white like an old man's skull
I set out on my camel, full-blooded and freshly branded.
His ears resemble fronds on the naked palm