WHEN I RETURN FROM THE HÔPITAL DE VERDUN, rather late, Sophie asks, “Where’ve you been all day? Who were you with?”

Sophie disliked it last year when I befriended the young woman nosing around the park to document facts about marginal and homeless citizens for the census. Sophie couldn’t believe that the woman, Sarah, had dutifully noted down my name as James Wolfe, son of Edward Wolfe and Henrietta Thompson, born in Westerham, England. I got confused about my birthdate and Sarah replied with understanding that for many homeless people such was the case. Sophie rolled her eyes as Sarah recorded that I was a soldier currently out of work, unmarried to woman or man, and childless.

“I stopped in at the Mission. My copy of Gray’s poem came.” I don’t feel like telling Sophie anything about my day with Harold, and it is true that I did pick up my book, though it was a disappointment.

“And?”

“I had a hard time getting it open. The box was cemented! I injured my thumb ripping the end. Here—look.”

“What?”

“It appears to have been woven out of laundromat dryer lint by robot spiders or silkworms, and the first page I opened tore under hardly an ounce of pressure. A drop of tea spilt on this book would cause the entire thing to dissolve.”

“Watch your disappointment,” she says. “You let it have too much power. Poetry lives spoken in air, not written on paper. But I’ll admit…” She fingers the sad volume. “This flimsiness is disgraceful. You’re almost better off getting the ebook.”

“I’ve memorized the poem,” I remind her.

Where does a poem exist when unspoken and unwritten yet committed to memory? I imagine its words afloat: letters invisible, vowels inaudible—a vapour unseen and unheard that yet infiltrates the soul, like love, like my memory of Eliza or George, less substantial than fragrance but outlasting death.

Rain patters on the tent.

“Why am I seeing twin cactuses over your head?” Sophie demands.

I don’t feel up to questioning her visions just now. “I’ve no idea.”

“One has eyes all over it—eyes covering the whole cactus: big open eyeballs staring as hard as they can. The other one’s covered in spikes. Long, lethal spikes—it’s afraid….What the hell are the cactus twins trying to say?”

“They’re your vision. How should I know?”

“But they’re over your head. The one with eyes, it’s starting to overflow with tears. Every eye on it is a river of grief. You’re a river of grief tonight. Why?”

“You know there are a lot of reasons why a man like me might feel sad.”