Interregnum

A Traveler Is Met by Shapes of the World

[Meet the Author]

The beautiful stranger
became two, then more,
the way ice, melting,
finally breaks from itself,

and with unforgeable
signatures the pieces
free the river. I lay flat
on the rush of a stranger's

body. Have splayed
to hear shuttered spirits
shift and groan below
a winter-lidded lake.

In Gdansk where the mouths
of Wislaw and Motlawa
find the Baltic, the gates
of the shipyards stand

open. Miroslaw, you
were there that spring when,
after a winter of martial
law, the river-

ice began to pile
high as it does every
spring. But how inexorable
it was! Each

heaped and still-frozen
boulder had become
a changing face, a public
notice, wet with tears.