“I know,” you tell Loren, even if you can’t really tell
what is making her cry (it’s not like when at 6 a.m.
she unwraps our day, or cries for poo, hunger or rage), “I know.”
This way cosmologists postulate dark matter, energy and flow.
So much effort to understand ends up like an alka-seltzer
sizzling on the kitchen wet worktop, our mind is a poor sensor
for the shadows – that yet from time to time are issued
from measures of our language so we get a little truce.
But the obscure things, life invisible in the making,
were sometimes roused by your eyes in this past year
in that point of air that with every blink’s a rhyme
scheme involving a black pupil, light and rimmel.
You knock against a corner and Loren, who can’t talk, says “ainou” –
and if you shed a tear it will be sweet, be clear and slow,
like your silkwarmth or the white flower of the clover,
the last milk between you two and my paper now that this is over.