I walk the world with a locked box
Lodged in my chest. Doctor, it hurts
But not as much as it should. In Bucha,

On the roadway of the Street of Apples
A woman lay four weeks straight
Unburied even by snow. They saw her red

Coat and rolled right over, Russians,
Tanked and vigilant in their to and fro. 
Doctor, there’s nothing wrong with me

That isn’t also true of many others. 
At night I sleep under a vast epiphany
That hasn’t descended upon me,

Pinpricks that shine a white writing 
I can’t read. I don’t want to know 
Yet. Instead I ask to stay here, greedy 

For the smell of autumn. Before 
Leaving, I’ve made a miniature of me
To witness the raising of the sea, 

To watch over the unimaginable,
To greet this revelation of a future 
With those new names it will need.  

Apricots died young in blossoms still nipples. Frost cut them free, and their scattering made me
mourn the child I had long ago,
so I wrote this poem.

1

Don't fondle these pearls.  O hands of ice,
fondle pearls and they're quick to fly.

And don't cut spring short, sudden frost.
Cut spring short and that blaze of beauty's lost.

Still nipples, tiny blossoms fall in tatters
tinged pure as a child's robes long ago.

I gather them, never filling my hands,
and at dusk, grief empty, return home.

 
3

It must be this same thread of tears
piercing the hearts of spring trees:

before blossoms opened anywhere,
flake after flake fell to the blade.

Spring's life never lasts, it's true,
but my lament over frost is already

impossibly deep.  Instead of blossoms
bathing streams, tears bathe robes.

 
4

At our son's birth, the moon was dark,
and when he died, it began to shine.

Moon and child, they stole each other
away.  O scarcely lived child of mine,

what's it like, blossom after blossom,
if not endless blue heavens in lament,

sweetness falling into earthen dust,
nothing left to bloom in other times?

 
8

Calamity infecting a child is natural:
blossoms mostly fail.  Still, I gather

ruins of the heart, a spent old man
cradling love's debris in endless night.

What can be said once sound dies away?
And once hope's dead, song's useless.

Old and sick--no child, no grandchild,
I stand like bundled firewood, alone.