as he did when he was a boy,

taking a pear here, an apple there,

three peaches.

It is easy. They are there, by the roadside.

I want to say to him, stop.

I want to say to him, where is the plum tree you planted?

But how can I say this?

I suck on the pit of my question,

I who also eat daily the labor of others.

A DAY COMES

A day comes

when the mouth grows tired

of saying “I.”

Yet it is occupied

still by a self which must speak.

Which still desires,

is curious.

Which believes it has also a right.

What to do?

The tongue consults with the teeth

it knows will survive

both mouth and self,

which grin—it is their natural pose—

and say nothing.

THE DOUBLE

More and more I have come to wonder

about this stranger—

woman whose sweaters and coats resemble my own,

whose taste in breads and coffee

resembles my own,

who sleeps when I sleep, wakens when I awaken.

For her,

whose verb form takes the felicitous s at its close,

what happens is simply what happens.

I fret the most slender of errors—

the name forgotten, the borrowed book unreturned—

but never have found her holding a teacup

or coin between her fingers

as if its substance and purpose were something she did not comprehend.

How self-assured she seems,

who decides nothing,

whose insomnia is to my own what the shadow of a leaf is to a leaf.

I am tired, but she is not tired.

I am wordless;

she, who has never spoken a word of her own,

is full of thoughts as precise and impassioned

as the yellow and black exchanges of a wasp’s striped body.

For a long time I thought her impostor.

Then realized:

her jokes, even her puns, are only too subtle for me to follow.

And so we go on, mostly ignoring each other,

though what I cook, she eats with seeming gusto,

and letters intended for her alone I open with a curious ease,

as if I, not she, were the long-accomplished thief.

NOT ONLY PARALLEL LINES EXTEND TO THE INFINITE

For a few days, any pattern lingers—

Just now, for instance,

though here it is California and late afternoon,

the urge to be drinking bad coffee and eating good butter

on rolls for breakfast at the Hotel Fortuna in Kraków.

Then putting some slices

of brown bread and cheese in a heavy napkin for later.

Flavors vanish first, and then the sounds.

Unphilosophical as a yet unsharpened pencil, the senses;

as without purpose.

A horse’s muzzle struck deep in the oats and his eyes half closed.

At each X, the three worlds meet, then part forever.

Of this the horse knows nothing, living outside of time.

And if I, like Chekhov’s sleepless coachman,

were to go now and whisper “Kraków” into his ears,