Well, I've gotten better and better over that time,
so you're luckier.
I'm going to read new work, which is to say,
poems written since this last book.
I should say about "The Garden" that it's a chapbook.
It's really just one poem, bound in green for Easter.
Can you hear me in the back?
OK.
There's not too much I can do to raise my voice because I really
am sick.
So if you can't hear it, you should move more forward.
"The Blind Girl"
When I was 10, God sent two arrows meant for my eyes.
Two arrows, two capsules of snow that shattered, so the bandage
froze to my face.
When they took it off, I was blind.
Nurse, how strange the darkness is, not black at all,
but the passive color of absence,
as though one afternoon an image came--
of autumn, of a garden where all color had converged to fade--
and faded and was not replaced.
I listened.
I heard voices, I heard my own voice,
rising from the still transparent body
of an angel as calmly as the wind lifts
the edges of the curtains, letting in the measured light.