Here are the baits, the hooks

Are hidden. Pincushions,

Is my suit ready?

I recognize them. They were made

Of dirt and spittle in an orphanage.

How they sigh, then quickly cross themselves

With their feet.

I’m the cold window-pane of a house

Abandoned for the Winter. They walk,

Solemn, dipped in cigarette smoke,

Like an angry word scratched in a public urinal.

One of them will walk over my grave—

Not this one I kill innocently

Or that one, inert

On the ear of my sleeping daughter.

For a long time I’ve been trying

To remember something. On my finger

The fly glows like a ring. The wind,

The first Winter one,

High above the house

In the redwood trees.

A killed fly always comes back.

Can one suddenly wake up inside one?

We make flies as we think.

Only Saints know the exact number.

I hailed a big black one like a taxi,

Today, as the night was falling.

It took me to a room

Where solitude keeps its saucer of milk.