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And the last poem I'll
read from this book,

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it's a poem that was written
in New Haven, Connecticut

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when I taught there for a year.

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And I like that year because
I rented a little room.

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I think it's something we
should do every so often, have

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a little room to ourselves.

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And I wrote a lot of
poems in that room,

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and this is one of them.

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It's called "Poem
Approaching Truth."

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And it's in eight short parts.

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"One, I rent a room.

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The twisted limbs
of the radiator

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are still a little warm,
blood turning back to water,

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cast iron that once possessed
the inner light of bone.

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What life still lingers in the
flow that keeps the cold away?

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Two, why did I do it?

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Leaving my wife behind for a few
months for a few thousand bucks

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to teach at a college
where somewhere

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between the flipped page
and the computer's hum,

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there is a constant reappraisal
of the human hand, which,

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at any other moment, might
be forming clay or turning

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a key in a lock.

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The wrist and the doorknob
turn, a little darkness escapes,

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a breath we have all taken.

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If this is silence, I
am its continuous echo.

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Three, I overhear
someone speaking

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of a hometown, one waterfall.

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In his voice, I
hear that waterfall.

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In his eyes, endless,
constant, the long fall,

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the first rush of
electrical power,

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a light going on, going off.

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Four, I teach two courses,
poetry both of them.

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My wife lies in a bed
tonight 600 miles away.

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My blood circles slowly
around her absence within me.

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It clings to the
breath where her name

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is hidden in the anonymous
flesh of oxygen, a breath that

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will rise, escape, and
settle like new snow

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over the distance
between loss surveyors.

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I turn, oddly, the
dial on the radio,

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picking up stations
from places far off.

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A voice turns into
a melody of static.

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Five, in my neighborhood,
at the luncheonette,

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in the black leotards,
the waitress Paulette

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looks over my shoulder, pleased
to see her name on a napkin set

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to verse.

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In the delicatessen, no one
discovers the bagel missing,

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as I slip away.

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And no one discovers
that I have slipped away.

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Late at night in the
laundromat, my clothes

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afloat in the wretched
heat of a 10-cent dryer,

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I swear to end this
life as poet whatever.

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And later in bed, piece
together the broken

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accent of my landlady, who
wants her rent, as if it would

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buy her the other
half of the puzzle,

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her Romanian landscape
described in eloquent English.

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Six, if I could once bypass
spring, making no sacrifice,

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opening no book, worrying about
no harvest, I would, I would.

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Just before morning,
after a night

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spent believing fully
in wisdom, my hands

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began sweating because
before them, nakedness

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appeared by itself, with neither
man nor beast taking its form.

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And I could neither
touch nor write.

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And my eyes, compasses
without needles,

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looked everywhere,
everywhere I turned.

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Seven, it is time to leave.

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It is 600 miles to my wife,
20 minutes to my girlfriend.

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I look back at the room,
as if somewhere in it,

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I have left a clue
or even an answer.

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The shadow of the curtain
blows like wild hair

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over the half blank, abandoned
pages of a new manuscript.

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The bedspread pushes slowly
my imprint back to the air.

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And in the dry, dry
water of a mirror,

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two eyes float, as if somewhere
a body, unsure of its buoyancy,

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were to see itself as clearly
under the sea as in the air

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and long for neither.

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I close the door.

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Eight, I buy a local newspaper.

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Every day, my horoscope warns
me to abstain from business.

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My life is not for sale.

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I know that.

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And yet, I bargain with it until
it is all I have left to offer.

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I offer it.

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Someone always accepts."

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