"Still Life with Stranger."
"Come on, Ulrich, the great octagon of the sky
is passing over us.
Soon the world will have moved on.
Your love affair, what is it but a tempest in a teapot.
But such storms exude strange resonance,
the power of the Almighty reduced
to its infinitesimal root, hangs like the chant of bees,
the milky drooping leaves of the birch on a windless autumn day.
Call these phenomena or pinpoints.
Remote as the glittering trash of heaven,
yet the monstrous frame remains, filling up with regret
with straw or on another level with the quick grace
of the singing falling snow.
You are good at persuading them to sing with you.
Above you, horses graze, forgetting daylight
inside the barn.
Creeper dangles against rock face.
Pointed roofs bear witness.
The whole cast of characters is imaginary now.
But up ahead in shadow, the past waits."