Around the Block of the World

I

A story is being told to hold off pain,
the listener thin, pale, a slight smile

on her lips. The story could be
about anything broken: a wall in a certain city,

the day you came home from the hospital
to this street, to all the years we walked

around and around the block. It was summer. Or leaves fell
on the children who had followed us. Laughing,

hiding in hedges. As we were saying
something about desire or renunciation

Once when I asked if there were anything else
I could do, you said, "Can you heal me?"

II

This isn't, whatever you think, a cousin of pity.
It is a happiness   or resembles one   we often had

words in our air   we taste them   suspicious of pleasure
then   finding it

Finches in the garden   thistle lovers   now the cosmos
is tall   the light is moving

and stippled, cautious   coming to you   with its shadows.
Outside, something flashes. Your new cane holding sun? A leaf?

A message? As we walk, you tell me something to tell him,
after you - "But not right away."

III

All afternoon clouds pile toward,
but then move past. Your eyes grow

larger. Later, a dream wakes me with the words
bear your form   I'm trying

to find something to close off, to despise,
something to balance the landscape opening

in your eyes, but   despise   means
not to look at   and it's too late.

I look and look. I keep, though I don't know what -
watch?   time?   Last night, in sleep,

I walled you in a garden, but you said
"I can't see you," so I cut a window.

You wanted a door. "I don't know," I said. You said,
"I want to be in the world."

"It's so expensive," I said, in my tending, intending to -
"So dear," you agree, as we walked slowly around one block of it.