watching the sea & the yards of sand flat as her thumb writing letters for sixty years what next

what year assigned whose face without rapture’s addiction what fact growing old Menelaus

covers their daughter at night folding her t shirts packing the apple & sandwich thinking of

beauty’s last trace last deal best price at the end of the war Pain rubs the backs of the dead rubs

smoke from the sky inscribing their names into the book where their names appear day after day

Pain thinks of famine’s children thronging the streets Pain thinks of Helen reading headlines

closing the closet door visiting tombs crematoriums palatial as light’s origin whose brilliant

stones she climbs kissing the husband gone early to bed kissing the daughter asleep for hours her

fingers pulled to her mouth the stuffed toy dragged through the bars