The Transparencies Of Time (Especially 1970)

I was looking for the words
that had just come out of your mouth.
Were they coins or stones by now?

If they were ever to float again
it was all in my hands.
The alley and the cave of cloth,

the wind confessed its shape in them.
God, who would have thought
the wind was that ugly.

I take my teeth out
and scoop up whatever’s on the ground.
I waste an afternoon sorting,

I think to myself, that’s better than James Wright.
I console myself
with nothingness like space.

I breathe your name once more.
Perhaps your words are gone forever,
the sound become molecules of glass.