V: X

WILLIAM MATTHEWS

RETICENCE

Once moths dusted these windows,

and another time, snow, each flake

like an ice-doily some schoolchild cut

with blunt-ended scissors. Never

run with scissors, Jennifer, remember?

Then the window froze over, like a pond.

And once we went to the opera

two nights running, first La Bohéme,

then Cav and Pag: onto the sun-broiled

Sicilian set an afterthought

of stage snow from the night before

lazily drifted down. Suppose what's

said is the plot, and what's not said

is the long reverberation

of the plot, time, the dead language

in which the starved glance at the window

is like so much drifted desire, a love

that can, but will not, speak its name.