rejected applications to the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung: DOC. NO. 39D500E72

in the long light of your fear i cast a shadow. shape goes; your blindness
a scotch-scented thing that throws you back. we have other resources, you

& i--an edged appraisal, a line of sight, your slouch, loud laughter
bellying the night. what is there to say? i am your cipher, the knife-

edge of my outline your refuge. i do not know the substance of your need.
i phenomenal, a trick of light diffracting your desire. but the evening

stretches. adrift we stop each other's gaps. my city grown strange & i
vagrant: a minor storm in your turbulence that might otherwise lay waste

to a system. we shall not meet again, but in an hour of lucidity we honed
our teeth. as mean as that. you would sell me at the next port of call.

report 000029: after the turning

one wakes to difference, the cold light of practice. money where your mouth is. pull the trigger. having finally & at last caught up with oneself in time: it bewilders. push the button. no rewiring at the core but auxiliary protocols now strange, commands to be relearned, different pitfalls. no manual

accompanied this update. how one observes the world. new traps of looking, of the meeting of eyes. vagaries of reference. one lives in validation, yes, glorious& strange, but how

to slate oneself in context, now, with the proof of one's own changing sealed & stamped, hung at eye-level, unavoidable and sure? i have not yet learned how to live in halving. to be calm in its face.

one must, & shall. a time when the shape of one's own life no longer startles. i am free, now, you see, to hear you everywhere, to recognize your echo & cadence in the pattern of my days. to understand that we, growing

older, are twinned stars indeed; that we have, in some very material way, progressed from hypothesis to fact. these are strange territories. having lived for so long in one land of uncertainty i had become accustomed

to particular darknesses, textures of obscure. to balance the self around a certain kind of vacuum; to accept a set of lacks. it had been years. but there was a crossing. a shift dramatic as the nightline sweeps the globe.

no more a land of fear. something, instead, of patience, perhaps, though the terrain sweeps unsteady away from my looking, & i unsure of my outfitting. i keep the map that led me to this place beneath the packet of your letters which i find some mornings waking. the shake&thrill of new country. i hear you singing back.

songs for keeping the watch: night 12

the watch begins again: the measured pace, the night's long vantage,
resolute & hum. our love a reckon, sharp & sweet & rung. the autumn

waxes. day waives into day. along the planet's curve i sing you back
the hours we have spent, our synchronize. the sense still lingers;

honey on the tongue. long days of coffee, laughter, sudden sun: each
a ready in the rope of years. the nets we cast for blankets, huddled

here; across the night outstretched we trace the time. the pattern we
have made in passing through, the lope & launch of orbit, twinned & strung.

though at removes, in distance & in lack, our fugue resolves--smooth
merging of our maths--jointly now, articulate & stride. in this brisk

air i bate. we weather to our liking, you & i: improbable, perfected,
now in wait. formidable in season. i mind the days as one who knows

that watches always end, who knows the face that, waiting, welcomes in.

songs for keeping the watch: night 11

the long sweep of time. but i in perpetual lag spring ever to catch you
among the hours, rota. & you would stop but cannot. so i would fling.

the sense is of hurtle through space, this long thin wire. your reel once
caught turns again. i glee. but honey-slow, heavy as sleep, the quarter-

days tick& drag. a whistle of shifts. an endless revolving. the day an
hart glimpsed infrequent through brambles. i brush a stone. to grasp

the same minutes in arms: for what weather holds so long that it bears
news of you in true lines? no spent molecule does not lose its way. no

turning that does not swing it into orbit. what i will give that for a span
turning will not mean hours i find at secondhand from you but formation

of a line, the sweep of sight; to catch the breath which holds you, & lets go.

songs for keeping the watch: night 10

i catch a minute fleeing, swing. alarmed by future rushing, restless,
wing. in moment trapped, a current held when i would rather curl & dream

of flight: a need for plan, a sweet design, a stain, blue ink & verified.
a gap between two stones. i shine a light that passing by you might

glance up & glancing gather strength. a long night standing though (the
marked hour stubborn cruel & slow) my stopwatch gives the lie: dawn is

coming, darling, and the time when i peer through a window, laughing, & am
caught your fall of hair/a line of teeth update the image, realign love's

memory with glossy present time. a glory that we have absorbed the years.
a counter running down to ETA & shunting trains, a new light playing

over days, the contour of terrain. stop: new line. the changes ring.