The house
A frightened face
In the window of another house.

Reconstitute a sense to make of absence
in the still heat of noon, south, summer
where spindled years unravel and unwind,

Each forward movement of the clouds leadens
The cupola covering the great men
A bit more. Then it explodes again

Two thousand orphans, real ones and children of
Jewish deported parents, so you and your
   ill-sorted Red Cross wartime colleagues

Yes, there is a vault in the ruined castle.
Yes, there is a woman waking beside the
gleaming sword she drew from the stone of childhood:

Syllables shaped around the darkening day’s
contours. Next to armchairs, on desks, lamps
were switched on. Tires hissed softly on the damp

The King of Denmark wore a yellow star.
French Jews paid for their own with one textile
ration-point: not what Pétainists wore

After lunch, the Sunday strollers boil
on the pavement, two miles from Belleville,
which may be the upcoming quartier

She’s sixteen, and looks like a full-grown woman,
teen-aged status hinted at by the acne.
I remember infancy’s gold, unblemished

The streetlights bent
the sleet streams as I went
up the deserted Rue des Deux Ponts,

You mocked me that hot day at Carcassonne,
“We’re tourists now!” waving the green Michelin.
We’d come to meet your old pals from Tucson—

She’s in a room full of letters, dressed in white
amidst proliferate papers, the exploded lace of sheets.
Her hair froths white, her pale eyes chill, as when I first