This poem is called White Notes, and it's an example,
I think, of something I call benign obscurity,
meaning if I explained it, you could understand.
No, no, no.
There are other kinds too, and people like
it like other kinds as well.
I only like benign obscurity.
White Notes.
It's in several little sections.
The first.
Suddenly there was a dress inhabited in motion.
It contained a forest, small birds, rivers.
It contains the ivory of piano keys, white notes.
Across the back of a chair, skins of animals
dried in the moon.
Two.
It happened.
Your body went out of your body.
It rose to let the air in, the night.
From the sheets it rose, from the bare floor, floating.
Over roofs, smaller and smaller, lost.
Entangled now in the cold arms of distant street lamps.
Three.
The city forgets where you live.
It wanders through many streets, and the streets turn, confused,
upon one another.
Parks have deserted themselves.
All night, awnings are whipped and cannot remember.
Oh, forgotten, umbrella.
Darkness saw you, air displaced you, words erased you.
Four.
And afterwards, after the quenching of the street lamps,
long after the ivory could have been brought back
to life by any touch.
Afterwards, when I might have told
you the address of your future.
Long after the future, when the umbrella
had been closed forever.
Then, when not even the moon would
have the power to bruise you anymore.
Then, in another time.