but constantly remembering: as if this body were
yoked to another, so it becomes impossible to tell
which wing is substance, and which its shadow—
Not how the mouth might sing, but that despite time’s
repertoire, it returns to the same tune. Not the cup
left in the yard overgrown with grass, but that it
has become a little boat run aground in the shoals.
Not the earth punctured with stones, not the bones
interred in its depths: merely the sorrow of water—
how no one will drink from the rain barrels, how no one
runs into the fields anymore to bathe in the rain.
In response to cold mountain (30).