Above the East River,
dull ochre smoke hangs

You know the story? About the dark-eyed girl who seduces
the holy man and ends the long drought.

kept in the linen closet—
cut perfectly to fit

There is a cataract of blood over the dawn;
I know by watching
from the river’s fringes of wild grass

As if they were trying to build on a different thought
the clouds accumulate between sun and the city,
so the beams go wide and break into sheaves of light.

Breath through the flute like light constrained
in a prism, rays, and is made to weave
a tense web trembling as the notes blow over a

The wind and the rain, the trees swung like a bell
all across Massachusetts in the fall,
and the torn fog steaming from the yellow mountains,

Their pupils are sunken synagogues
They huddle around the grave,
beneath sycamore branches

He’s come to the beginning of the end
Of the poem, the moment when he turns
To place the first of its words on paper.

Ellen and I Go Back—at least as far
as her pre-op days when she was still a man
and minced each midnight through the local bar.