The good tourist might well observe,
out of an ice-cold heart, these things
that admiration nowhere lists,
might bring his private moratorium to a close
with judgments as to nuance, the way
the rain fell on the gathered crowd,
leather gleaming as though every informant
were cursed with a painter’s eye.
A girl brushes the hair from her face
and smiles at something happening just offstage.
Wisdom strays at the screen’s edge,
the day dying down with a servant’s eye for detail.
Memory works as well as prayer,
a candle or a postcard marks the place
where form of address made its radical change,
and a hidden tomorrow allowed itself to be imagined.