Three Poems By Heart

I

I can't find the title

of a memory about you

with a hand torn from darkness

I step on fragments of faces

soft friendly profiles

frozen into a hard contour

circling above my head

empty as a forehead of air

a man's silhouette of black paper

II

living—despite

living—against

I reproach myself for the sin of forgetfulness

you left an embrace like a superfluous sweater

a look like a question

our hands won't transmit the shape of your hands

we squander them touching ordinary things

calm as a mirror

not mildewed with breath

the eyes will send back the question

every day I renew my sight

every day my touch grows

tickled by the proximity of so many things

life bubbles over like blood

Shadows gently melt

let us not allow the dead to be killed—

perhaps a cloud will transmit remembrance—

a worn profile of Roman coins

III

the women on our street

were plain and good

they patiently carried from the markets

bouquets of nourishing vegetables

the children on our street

scourge of cats

the pigeons—

softly gray

a Poet's statue was in the park

children would roll their hoops

and colorful shouts

birds sat on the Poet's hand

read his silence

on summer evenings wives

waited patiently for lips

smelling of familiar tobacco

women could not answer

their children: will he return

when the city was setting

they put the fire out with hands

pressing their eyes

the children on our street

had a difficult death

pigeons fell lightly

like shot down air

now the lips of the Poet

form an empty horizon

birds children and wives cannot live

in the city's funereal shells

in cold eiderdowns of ashes

the city stands over water

smooth as the memory of a mirror

it reflects in the water from the bottom

and flies to a high star

where a distant fire is burning

like a page of the Iliad