TO GEORGE WHITMANlike some placeless angel I wandered over your threshold and was caught--an animal without end became the streets you couldn’t walk you told me: Paris is free and I dissolved into it some wild chance the bells of Notre Dame invited us to write our way through the real that breath of loss we were innumerable the forever you promised me--of life and the city --our only secret pushing self out of self on the impossible edge of the Seine where a science of loves was forming itself what past--that past? we aren’t over, George today the earth like a veil that falls from Salomé’s sovereign hand is hardly empty of you --it’s your gift an overabundance of evening color my body limbless and extended out your window past Cité I was infinite between languages my sorrows were passions I exceeded the museum and the books and had the papers for you daily I was only world because of you I rose out of your bathtub like a sylph making way for night and spilling over in your little tower you absorbed the joy from all the busy masquerades and games of comers and goers the musics of all centuries converged in your company you gleaned the girls of every era without shame I think it was a singular ancient talk you filled me with waking up with the unsaid taking her dance not an instant lost on us no end to the poem I wrote myself into--from you time allows for us to disappear behind its back you were more than alive--outside living beyond the congregation of statues at the cathedral garden and cannot have truly died you sharp-eyed king above all law generous wit collector of stray children facts were never a great interest of yours --the fact of life or being dead I salute you in our common luck of having for a birth --that sudden city14 Dec. 2011
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