No — a little residue of nothing. And admittance, what does it mean? That they are
     not going to blame themselves for anything.
But the deportees, no, there is nothing between the word and those who are not, who do not
         reviennent.
And if language is an arbitrary system, one must not go further than the sign No
       ADMITTANCE
         in the Hôtel-Dieu on the Place du Parvis Notre Dame.

Then my husband came with our child in his arms and stood outside Ste. Monique.
         They would not permit the child near my bed.
A tuberculosis wing in winter.
You go out then in the hallway, yes. You have the right to see your child. Don’t let
         anyone stop you. They are all fascists.

A rain through raised windows, as in: you must not forget anything: the hours, hope,
sleeplessness,
         and the trains, you must not forgive them.
Smoke rising from the fields, the death of a husband, winter’s
         breath and the moonlight that reached the pallet.
Hunger, and the knife of waking, the cold knife.

In April, the lilacs come, wrapped in Le Monde.
         “A plane went down in Warsaw this afternoon.”
There was time to imagine it: a wedding dress hanging in a toolshed outside Warsaw.

But when asked in what sense the world was worse, she answered Pardon, est-ce que je
       vous dérange?
         Je ne sais pas très bien m’éxpliquer en français.

Hôtel-Dieu? Some people say so. I say this God is insane.

We held roses, then the roses rested on the snow as if someone had died there. Winter.
       There were many
         graves. All the same kind.
So it would be a cemetery of war….

They died and were buried in mud but their hands protruded.
         So their friends used the hands to hang helmets on.

And the fields? Aren’t the fields changed by what happened?
         The dead aren’t like us.
How can the fields continue as simple fields?

The child has gone to the city with his father. They are en route past remaining weeks
         of boarded summer houses, beach pine, a blue water tower.
The winter residents are packing for spring.
You should return to Ellie. You mustn’t leave her alone.
But we’ve lost days, and many times tried to begin again, while she locks herself in the
       water closet to sing.
         (The words are somewhere. The words belong here.)
Her skin sloughing in the hard towels.
And just then the doves rise and batter the wind.

In my absence, the child took his first step alone,
         moving along the white hallway without help but at night nearly drowning in
       my own breath.
Ellie lifting tissues of herself from herself.
Here, in this book, I have found your illness. It is called St. Anthony’s Fire.