And then took the picture as a way of saying

Good-bye to everyone who saw it, & perhaps Josef Koudelka was

Only two years old when the Nazis invaded Prague.

I do not wish to interfere, Reader, with your solitude—

So different from my own. In fact, I would take back everything

I've said here, if that would make you feel any better,

Unless even that retraction would amount to a milder way

Of interfering; & a way by which you might suspect me

Of some subtlety. Or mistake me for someone else, someone

Not disinterested enough in what you might think

Of this. Of the photograph. Of me.

Once, I was in love with a woman, & when I looked at her

My face altered & took on the shape of her face,

Made thin by alcohol, sorrowing, brave. And though

There was a kind of pain in her face, I felt no pain

When this happened to mine, when the bones

Of my own face seemed to change. But even this

Did not do us any good, &, one day,

She went mad, waking in tears she mistook for blood,

And feeling little else except for this concern about bleeding

Without pain. I drove her to the hospital, & then,

After a few days, she told me she had another lover…. So,

Walking up the street where it had been raining earlier,

Past the darkening glass of each shop window to the hotel,

I felt a sensation of peace flood my body, as if to cleanse it,

And thought it was because I had been told the truth…. But, you see,

Even that happiness became a lie, & even that was taken

From me, finally, as all lies are…. Later,

I realized that maybe I felt strong that night only

Because she was sick, for other reasons, & in that place.

And so began my long convalescence, & simple adulthood.

I never felt that way again, when I looked at anyone else;

I never felt my face change into any other face.

It is a difficult thing to do, & so maybe

It is just as well. That man, for instance. He was a saboteur.

He ended up talking to a horse, & hearing, on the street

Outside that alley, the Nazis celebrating, singing, even.

If he went mad beside that wall, I think his last question

Was whether they shot his wife & children before they threw them

Into the ditch, or after. For some reason, it mattered once,

If only to him. And before he turned into paper.

NOTES

“The Poet at Seventeen” is meant to recall Rimbaud's title. Other lines in the poem intentionally echo Pound and Baudelaire.

“The Cry” is at least partially indebted in its methods to Joseph Brodsky's poem, “Grand Elegy.” The poem also borrows a phrase freely translated from the Spanish of Pablo Neruda.

“After the Blue Note Closes”—The Blue Note is a rock music bar in Columbia, Missouri.

The setting of “The Quilt” is the Amish settlement of Kalona, Iowa.