I have a sense of place
in this room enriched by scarcity:
unadorned walls, cold-water sink,
my cracked casement window
where I hear the bells that ring
—the sound of things required
among the domes of Sacré-Coeur,
unconditional domes, in mist, rising
like something hardly real,
a vision that may or may not exist,
though that distinction is ineligible
up here among hoodlum pigeons
at the quiet drifting edge,
where I’ve come to find a place of sense.

*

Did you hear something in the corridor,
a complaint on the landing,
the rattle of a long-neglected door
touched by night drafts in the building?
Did Madame Antonini climb the stairs?
Would she be in the storage room
at 3:00 A.M., bedeviled and sere,
looking for spiders to kill with a spoon?
Didn’t you hear it? I heard something
like wind in ...

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