"Music is my first language; language was my second language. Since my childhood, I liked to tear up language and put things back together like a broken ashtray. I grew up in a family of musicians, and my father preferred Bach and Rodin to science. This poem was inspired by love, the ocean and the doomed donkey in Robert Bresson’s film, 'Au hasard Balthasar.' My favorite artists—Johns, Guston, Porter—are figurative, abstract, secular and sacred at the same time. You can call me a miniaturist, but I love putting long sequences together more like chamber music or unaccompanied sonatas. I tried to keep this poem as simple as childhood despite references to Hölderlin, Tennyson, and the sorrows of love, and illness. I forget a lot but not my childhood. It’s hard to remember when it’s so good to forget. My favorite medium is eraser fluid and the human voice. Dear reader, if poetry weren’t music, how could there be songs?"
—David Shapiro