"Le Fanu's Story."
"Sheridan Le Fanu offers a variation
on this story in which the whole family hears a carriage arrive
late at night just at the time that they later
learn their older daughter has died miles away.
Even the dogs start barking, and they all clearly hear
the folding down of the carriage stairs.
But when they open the door, the courtyard is empty,
and the dogs recoil in fear.
So that the sight of anyone in an unexpected place,
so that the voice now traveling alone out all on its own
on a quiet day--
I saw a friend I knew to be in Japan.
I once saw my sister on a train.
Sometimes it's only a strong resemblance,
and then you wonder if the person in question
hasn't had a close call, crossing
the street with an absent mind or walked out of the building
just moments before it blew up, caught a cab on the corner
and never knew.
It happens every day.
We are made in a thin thread or of the line incised
into the pain, which may only be a photograph, she said.
Whenever I look at a photograph, I
see not the man who died years ago,
but the one who will, or in a window,
turned and touched his fingers to his lips."