The light of the moment becoming a memory—
that was their subject: as if the present
could be haunted by its own nostalgia.

Because so much consequential thinking
happens in the rain. A steady mist
to recall departures, a bitter downpour

The war is over.
The builders come:
they build doors with archways; the ceilings are high

Drones out brittle, weary invocations, the certainty
                                      of fruit now distant as the first word
On God’s tongue. Such disarray. So much leaf-rot,

My head emerging from this paper box—
not heavy but sufficiently opaque
and put there up across my balding pate

Noise is relative, too, like space
and time. For fish, who live packed
in water, the massive crash of a leaf

Until the lid is on the box
the box we are is open
except when it’s not

And even fish, pulled from lakes and ponds
and swimming, now, in glassed-in tanks with bubble
baths, and growing fat on food for free—

Dogs bark, say the Russians,
But wind blows it away.

We chug and churn like clumsy gears, machined
for motion but clanking, slow, heavy with friction.