POEM FOR K.

5 3 R P O E M F O R K . M A T T H E W L A D D ‘‘. . . a time of thick Béarnaise and mercenary quibbling,’’ the tutor concluded, clicking the slide to whiteness. He always had some salient mot for Father, and he had read enough of Sir James Frazer to crack a few jokes about pricked foreskin. ‘‘Take my Homo catullus, please!’’ he would say, or ‘‘Heavens! All that vulgar chamois upholstery!’’ Like overzealous critics, we lampooned his serge and ambled about the damp marble cloisters, darker than darkness, clever and querulous, one eye on the weather, the other on each other. In Copenhagen, at Andersen’s cenotaph, we ate cheese sandwiches and pickled eggs. In London, the Queen’s Guards with their milk-can shakos steadied their sabers between our laughing faces. Why did you leave? Was it our view of the Channel disgorging dead fish like a greenhorn sea-god? That winter, the Thames glazed over, just a little, its spirals of ice for years the most beautiful until you called me to Montauk, slim as a needle. How frustrating to realize we’re truly di√erent! First that picnic below the threads of cirrus, and now this co√ee. Not to mention my ga√e at last week’s reading in Philadelphia – ‘‘Oh Dean, you unconscionable tease! ’’ – trying to be like the old man I suppose. Your hand, that once rocked my cradle, rocks so contentedly, these late days, another. But I wanted only for us to talk like friends again, K., K., my long-lost, best-loved sister. ...