How things can turn around.
It took only an unlikely
mirror, a face unlike
yours, gentler, more rotund,

but with that softening
effect a look of pain can have
when stony, turned inward: a cave
walled off. Often stinging

screams have drowned themselves here:
I love him! -- whispered like curled ferns
cut by my fingernails -- unfurled
kernels of tears. Other

grains, too, turn to green rain,
and the rain becomes beads for all
maples and sycamores laughing
to sweep up; the marred grass

will perk up. I give you
this gusty dawn, glow against glow
near the South Ferry, where billows
disturb still buildings, glue

loosened by fluid. Him
I'll leave sleeping; his scalp I'll not
stroke as you do. Old lies and plots
play awhile in the dim

bedroom, but the sun makes
mirrors of these. You can guess how
joyfully the light leaps in glass
won without burns or cuts,

stunning you with the sight
of others so unlike yourself,
form fighting through them, as all false
faces die into white.