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

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

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

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

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

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