Report from No-Name

Report from No-Name

Sick as we’ve been for so long, our loved ones

sick too, it’s hard to find a good so small

it’s safe from pain’s decay. Like burying

the food you’ve got in a small iron box

so deep in the earth the rats won’t guess it’s

there, much less try to dig it up and gnaw

it open. Those tireless teeth and little paws!

And yet we do it, you and I, day after day

we find it and build it, our small good sanctuary

—the “delicate web” you’ve called it—

here in No-Name Apartment, so spacious and

ailing it’s perfect too, no dissonance, in chairs

astride the hole in the ceiling, water dripping

into a roasting pan, I read T’ang poems, forgetting

what I read and reading it again, and you read

manga, broad inks flaring across a tiny screen,

never forgetting one you’ve read but

luckily there are thousands of them. Whole days

can pass like this. The best, the luckiest days. In 

the evening we drink gin and red wine—too

much, which is the just-enough we need. You

create a simple meal—always delicious, never the

same twice—out of a handful of vegetables, a

little meat sometimes, and rice, and we eat two

helpings after clinking glasses, watching whatever

your rambles have pulled in today from cyberspace: 

techniques of masonry and stained glass in an old

cathedral, how the engineers at Machu Pichu

solved the problems of drainage ingeniously,

saving the emperor’s mountain terraces from simply

sliding away. Awe is good for the digestion.  

The best days blend, one into the other, variations

on a theme, and at night in our bed I curl gratefully

behind you, two chipped and tarnished spoons in

a dark drawer, working my hand around over your

night clothes to find your heart, its faint stubborn

thudding far beyond loss, deep below sorrow.