Because you are the Visiting Distinguished, and because our whole city is celebrating your illustrious Treatise On Weeping, I am giving a party in your honor and discussing with you some prominent instances of weeping

It is true, it is true
Sing the whippoorwills slightly off-key
In the small city park at night.

“Nebraska and Oklahoma have the longest contiguous border
Of any two states,” you announce.
Your hair stands up in corkscrews

I stare out the plate glass window
At sky over the Boston Common
Where seagulls coast past

Three powerful people
seized me, held me at gunpoint,
and demanded answers. They didn’t want money.

The face is featureless, 
As though bound in tight gauze, 
And therefore presents a mien 

This is not the Roman Campagna.
Arcadian shepherds are absent.
The myths here are Icelandic sagas

I go for silence
to the rear of my closet.
I’m safe from sound there.

But suppose, Irina, you find yourself asking:
What is the word for window?
And a voice, your own or someone else's, replies

Glass breaking and then laughter
under the open window—
a rabble of carousers