And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2013

Splitting

24 Splitting Unchanged, my whiskersnow of salt and pepper in the sink, the shaver shearing my chill cheek warm, a palmweight of buzzering. With half my face to do, a higher power sizzles my razor mute. Only my passport knows me now. My mirror shows me half-American, half-Adam . . . Beyond my balcony all Zurich rises to a signature of skyline. Half here, half home, half shaven, half asleep, I could be watching Cairo, Istanbul, Madrid, Beirut. A pigeon waves goodbye with both its wings and swerves for France. My western stare outflies it to the Spanish coast, the sea and, all at once, the States, the States! What is it to be gone but never gone? What leaves me more American in Zurich than in Pennsylvania? For answers I might interview those voyagers who’ve docked with God or be myself in different hemispheres at once. 25 The Tartars understood. Away from home, they kept their jackboots double-soled with China’s soil—so, no matter where they walked, they walked on China. ...