Two thousand orphans, real ones and children of
Jewish deported parents, so you and your
   ill-sorted Red Cross wartime colleagues

Syllables shaped around the darkening day’s
contours. Next to armchairs, on desks, lamps
were switched on. Tires hissed softly on the damp

You mocked me that hot day at Carcassonne,
“We’re tourists now!” waving the green Michelin.
We’d come to meet your old pals from Tucson—

Reconstitute a sense to make of absence
in the still heat of noon, south, summer
where spindled years unravel and unwind,

She’s in a room full of letters, dressed in white
amidst proliferate papers, the exploded lace of sheets.
Her hair froths white, her pale eyes chill, as when I first

The streetlights bent
the sleet streams as I went
up the deserted Rue des Deux Ponts,

Yes, there is a vault in the ruined castle.
Yes, there is a woman waking beside the
gleaming sword she drew from the stone of childhood:

The King of Denmark wore a yellow star.
French Jews paid for their own with one textile
ration-point: not what Pétainists wore

After lunch, the Sunday strollers boil
on the pavement, two miles from Belleville,
which may be the upcoming quartier

She’s sixteen, and looks like a full-grown woman,
teen-aged status hinted at by the acne.
I remember infancy’s gold, unblemished