To Urania

To I.K.

       Everything has its limit, including sorrow.

       A windowpane stalls a stare. Nor does a grill abandon

       a leaf. One may rattle the keys, gurgle down a swallow.

       Loneless cubes a man at random.

       A camel sniffs at the rail with a resentful nostril;

       a perspective cuts emptiness deep and even.

       And what is space anyway if not the

       body's absence at every given

       point? That's why Urania's older sister Clio!

       in daylight or with the soot-rich lantern,

       you see the globe's pate free of any bio,

       you see she hides nothing, unlike the latter.

       There they are, blueberry-laden forests,

       rivers where the folk with bare hands catch sturgeon

       or the towns in whose soggy phone books

       you are starring no longer; father eastward surge on

       brown mountain ranges; wild mares carousing

       in tall sedge; the cheeckbones get yellower

       as they turn numerous. And still farther east, steam dreadnoughts

                                                       or cruisers,

       and the expanse grows blue like lace underwear.

1983, translated by the author.