it's the lighthouse light that turns
the rest of me to early nightfall,
headland, home. I send it back,
a mirrored flickering across cold waters.
We allow ourselves the crest that breaks
above the surface then reforms.
We make it human and we call it love.
This wintering is my own and not the world's,
although the world is wintering.
WILLIAM LOGAN
For A Woman
In
United Germany
What do the birds believe in, in Stuttgart?
I can see them, oily rags
around the fountains in the central square.
Are there fountains? Is there a square?
There are miniature mountains,
because you describe them,
and suburbs draped over them
like dirty canvases. Are the suburbs relaxing,
or just tired, tired of winter?
On our boarded-up shops there appeared
a poster of a black girl, naked to th e waist,
a man's hands reaching around her
to
cup her breasts. Soon white strips
covered her body like shreds of clothing
and she'd been torn a new mouth.
Every language is naked in its own way.
