Shirt in Heaven. Jean Valentine

      I leave. I like that river the sky.

1943: The Vision

      I saw it when I was nine

      alone looking into a shed

      a human head cut in two lengthwise

      in profile, lifelike, in a museum-size

      glass jar, on a shelf.

      I knew what it meant:

      You must put the head back together again.

      How could I put the head back together again?

      But I promised. Everyone promised: dark eyes

      to dark eyes.

Forest, Stars

      Now the stars didn’t show:

      It was after the forest fire,

      after her friend had lost his thinking

      in the war — after

      he had come upon a silence:

      blood saliva semen her

Her last year

      Rest your mouth.

      Rest your music.

      Rest your walking around. Sit down.

      Drink. Eat.

      With my eyes, I see you eat stones.

      I see you eat bones.

      You eat mud. You eat the light.

      I don’t recognize anything.

      Not a sign, a cut, a knife, a dark wood, a net.

      I recognize everything.

      The sign, the cut, the knife,

      the dark wood, the net.

       for Marina Tsvetaeva