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Refrain A state becomes statement, Petrarch trips on a pile of laurel bones, severely damaged except for two lines. The body absorbs all kinds of things, a useless brilliant nothing guarding the borders of witness where the metaphors start, and the snow. Petrarch doesn’t dream of snow, except in silver bowls with syrup mixed into it, pomegranate or persimmon chasing summer somewhere next to lost, and then the brilliant birds fly from his mouth, perhaps just one, a bird of paradise with no legs, no feet, a lifetime’s inability to land. Petrarch whispers leaves into my ear, thinks Boys smell nice, boys smell like spring preserved in a December jar, open the lid and it escapes me just now, haunts the room all day: stains air, stains nostrils, cedar-pressed seasons sweetbitter somewhat like eros, like crushed laurel leaves stain fingers. He loves me nowhere but in words (another of the several things which I refrain from mentioning), boys’ names on trees or boys named after trees: fixing beauty in the wind, fixing hunger in the eye, the x of it. (I miss the men midnighting Lakeview streets.) Wind only visible in what it touches leads astray, disturbing to discard; 21 Shepherd PG:Layout 1 12/20/06 5:27 PM Page 21 trees shed their way toward nakedness leaf by leaf until the bough has been broken. A spatter of small nameable wings takes to the wind, takes care not to wake Petrarch, who’s dreaming rain’s refrain, fall down, fall down, but he’s already one with grass. And then a hero comes along with birds flying out of his mouth: one of the old verbs might be true, park paths of wind-polished pebbles lead one astray, into the snow. 22 Shepherd PG:Layout 1 12/20/06 5:27 PM Page 22 ...

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