It's so quiet now the children have decided to stop
being born. We raise our cups in an empty room.
In this light, the curtains are transparent as gauze.
Through the open window we hear nothing—
no airplane, lawn mower, no siren
speeding its white pain through the city's traffic.
There is no traffic. What remains is all that remains.

The brick school at the five points crosswalk
is drenched in morning glory.
Its white flowers are trumpets
festooning this coastal town.
Will the eventual forest rise up
and remember our footsteps? Already
seedlings erupt through cement,
crabgrass heaves through cracked marble,
already wolves come down from the hills
to forage among us. We are like them now,
just another species looking to the stars
and howling extinction.

They say the body accepts any kind of sorrow,
that our ancestors lay down on their stomachs
in school hallways, as children they lay down
like matches waiting for a nuclear fire.

It wasn't supposed to end like this:
all ruin and beauty, vines waterfalling down
a century's architecture; it wasn't supposed to end
so quietly, without fanfare or fuss,

a man and woman collecting rain
in old coffee tins. Darling,
the wars have been forgotten.
These days our quarrels are only with ourselves.
Tonight you sit on the edge of the bed loosening your shoes.
The act is soundless, without future
weight. Should we name this failure?
Should we wake to the regret at the end of time
doing what people have always done
and say it was not enough?

The world seems so palpable
And dense: people and things
And the landscapes 
They inhabit or move through.

Words, on the other hand, 
Are so abstract—they’re
Made of empty air
Or black scratches on a page
That urge us to utter
Certain sounds.
                           And us:
Poised in the middle, aware
Of the objects out there
Waiting patiently to be named,
As if the right words 
Could save them. 
                               And don’t
They deserve it? 					
So much hidden inside each one,
Such a longing 
To become the beloved.

And inside us: the sounds 
That could extend that blessing—
How they crowd our mouths,
How they press up against
Our lips, which are such 
A narrow exit for a joy so desperate.

You have to walk so close to the mirror
Before your breath clouds the image
You need to get a running start
You need to get a running start
To break through the refrain into repetition
As exile's continuous form forms the same
Words twice thrush thrush
Drab bird unseen in the dark dark's underbrush
Sung from the yeasty mouth

*

From within the cloud the voice sings
The voice is a singing cloud
You have to walk so close to breath 
Before you find the mirror
And then beginning looks just like
Beginning looks just like
What doesn't know how to complete itself
Otherwise 
What is there in saying house bridge fountain

*

bridge fountain gate jug 
jug fruit-tree window there I said them 
All and every all's this same
Cloud's faulty tower is this same 
Cloud's broken column trying to make a point
About breath by mentioning breath
I stand so close to the surface of the thing
I am dumb because I make myself dumb
And then the apples go mute

*

Jug jug
Make no noise
Who will find you in the middle of your breath
And keep whole all you want broken
Someone becomes
Someone again it must be done
Mouth scaring bird from its ever more hidden nest
A surface seems to know something about
Depth depth cannot know about itself

*

Right toward the mirror
Watch it fly as sometimes it does fly
Breath and every cloud
The sky has gotten a running start
It's why the apples ripen even though they hurt
The sky's running start
Let panic return and stand very still
You have to stand very still
Before what is wounded turns around and nears

*

A note plays in the dark
Plays all by itself in the dark just a note
Just a note called escape
What I'm telling you is what I cannot say
Otherwise this
Intimate breath is just another maze
The sun disappears
Inside the apple I mean there is a mirror
In a cloud and right there is your answer