Elegy in Norms

A reprieve: the subsiding of a storm. The withered leaves in the cracks

of the city’s cobblestones, the owl slams its head again and again

against the glass doors of the new coffee shop.

A chipped gimcrack inside my palm, a needle searching for a thimble:

because I know the names of every street in this city,

                                     I resist nomenclatures.

A truce, a never-ending interim: the subsiding of a storm.

A locust drags a bullock cart across the tramline.

I see you standing

                                     in the far end of the alley,

almost invisible: crouching behind the abandoned alabaster cherubs.

You are carving a constellation out of the bones, stolen from an incomplete

museum. An incomplete museum, an abandoned excavation site,

a notebook with nothing but inkstains:

                                     yet, when translated, this is an illuminating picture.

Where in this symmetry of blue-ink grief to look

for pronouns that would house my loud dissipations?