In Sepia

Now that image in its familiarity takes care of you.

Another surprise: courage is not a requirement,

because this new expansiveness, seeming always

to be a living extension of itself, only requires

your presence; the slight pressure of your body.

But it is not all reassuring, this comfort,

for you belong to it. The world, & your small love for it,

floats like the talk of the adults, & is barely mutable:

now you will feel a nostalgia for it;

no longer will you consciously alter its events.

& friendship, & companionship, faces of young students

which after the immediate pleasures of consent

had settled into composure, always refreshing your life,

must change value now; will be less quick & lovelier.

After a long time & if you again become articulate

or can listen generously, it can be given to you

to be provident, though this is at the mercy of love

among other dependencies, & is not assured.

IN SEPIA

Often you walked at night, houselights made

nets of their lawns, your shadow

briefly over them. You had been talking about

Death, over & over. Often

you felt dishonest, though certainly some figure

moved in the dark yards, a parallel

circumstance, keeping pace. By Death, you meant

a change of character: He is

a step ahead, interlocutor, by whose whisper

the future parts like water,

allowing entrance. That was a way of facing it

& circumventing it: Death

was the person into whom you stepped. Life, then,

was a series of static events;

as: here the child, in sepia, climbs the front steps

dressed for winter. Even the snow

is brown, &, no, he will never enter that house

because each passage, as into

a new life, requires his forgetfulness. Often you

would explore these photographs,

these memories, in sepia, of another life.

Their use was tragic,

evoking a circumstance, the particular fragments

of an always shattered past.

Death was process then, a release of nostalgia

leaving you free to change.

Perhaps you were wrong; but walking at night

each house got personal. Each

had a father. He was reading a story so hopeless,

so starless, we all belonged.