I don’t go out now. It’s a terrible thing to see me walk.
         (The bell of her husband’s ax breaking open the river.)

It is worse than memory, the open country of death.

A tall light entered the room. The windows, hand blown, were those of occupied Paris.
I was waiting for the child’s birth.
There were cut tulips in the glass.

Simone was alive. Twice her hand reached to fold the blue shutters back over the
       windows, and once she
         touched the window as I passed.
Under the plane trees of Montparnasse:
         The cemetery workman’s wheelbarrow, an old woman’s knowledge of graves.

That first week after his birth were wet balconies and voile. White roses.
         And God’s name a boneless string of vowels.

And just now it was as if someone not alive were watching,
         so I asked if he’d suffered very much and he said no.

But when I came back from the border something odd happened.
It had been more than seventy days and I weighed nothing.
My bags were no heavier than usual but I couldn’t lift them.
After a drink and some talk I went for a rest.
When I woke my room was filled with vultures.
They were hopping about the room, belching and vomiting flesh,
     as you saw them at Puerto Diablo and El Playon.

Exactly as you saw them.

As if someone not alive were watching.
On the sill, the bureau, in the bath and on my body

So fat with flesh they weren’t able to fly

And when I turned, there was nothing,
         as someone asks, Is something wrong?

In the window of my earlier life, it is often winter, a glass white with my own breath,     and in rubbing it clear I see only my own reflection.

It was years before my face would become hers, yours, and hers, the other’s, facing
         each other through days, pain, the prisoner’s visiting window.

Adjusting the light so as to see again, so as to commit memory to our features, my eyes,
         hers, our breath, hers, my own—

As if it were possible to go on living for someone else.

When she walked home with me, for me, toward the National Palace, then inside
         with me to prevent my going alone.

Knowing each would give the other her own life, I live yours now, the one you might
       have lived in Paris,
         and your daughters are with me.

We have festivals in memory of you, and nightmares in which you tell us

It is never night when you die.

Eight years later in France I opened your letter as if you had sent it years before we
were parted.
         On blue foolscap in your own hand:

What has become of us? The factory work has aged me, threaded my hair with tin,
         buried my eyes in my face, taken a few of my teeth
         and emptied my body of its fruits.