Still Life with Stranger

        Come on, Ulrich, the great octagon
	of the sky is passing over us.
	Soon the world will have moved on.
	Your love affair, what is it
	but a tempest in a teapot?
	 
        But such storms exude strange
	resonance: the power of the Almighty
	reduced to its infinitesimal root
	hangs like the chant of bees,
	the milky drooping leaves of the birch
	on a windless autumn day—
	 
        Call these phenomena or pinpoints,
	remote as the glittering trash of heaven,
	yet the monstrous frame remains,
	filling up with regret, with straw,
	or on another level with the quick grace
	of the singing, falling snow.
	 
        You are good at persuading
	them to sing with you.
	Above you, horses graze forgetting
	daylight inside the barn.
	 
        Creeper dangles against rock-face.
	Pointed roofs bear witness.
	The whole cast of characters is imaginary
	now, but up ahead, in shadow, the past waits.