Contents
The Condition
I
How It Is
Back from the Fields
Dorothy
Old Woman’s Song
At the Playground, Singing for Psychiatric Outpatients
The Brother
Drinking Cold Water
Gray Poem
The Marsh, New Year’s Day
The Coat
II
Living by Water
The Heavy Angel
To Tlaloc of the Rain
Home from Duck Marsh
Hymn to the Sacred Birds
Collecting the Animals
Learning to Speak
Perhaps It’s as You Say
The Gift
III
It Was Autumn
Routes
The Burden of Decision
Going
We Meet in the Lives of Animals
The Fish/Lago Chapala
Thus He Left
Counting
How to Handle It
Desire
Late Hour
IV
In Torino
The Dinner
Perosa Canavese
Sorting the Tools
Distance
Night Letters
Failure
Night
This World Awakes to Silence
V
Speaking of Accidents
On Modern Travel
From Station to Station
Three Poems Never Written
A Short Novel
Poem for Two Voices
VI
First Star
In the Last Days
Nocturnal Self-Portrait
I Dreamt
A Story
A Portrait
Elegiac Fragments
Poem Beginning with a Line from Leonardo Sinisgalli
Lullaby
From the Meadow
The Heart
Notes
Acknowledgments