The streets are wet outside
and I heard rain—
I’m being logical again,
not always a safe call.
Sage move. The streets
are open about what happens
and give clear hints
of where they go.
But nothing of the past.
Who knows where anything
comes from? This rain
I infer from heaven
as they used to call the sky
with a logic of their own.

2.
And who were they?
Ancestors clearly
but how to prove it?
All the noble DNA analyses
tell us more or less
where someonebodies
lived or went or came from
on a long trail of maybes.
But never who? So
who are they anyway
who made us who we are?

3.
Does it matter,
as the street would say.

Here we are, and we
are mysterious enough.

Which of us has looked
asked Thomas Wolfe
into his brother’s heart.

And I don’t even a brother,
if you know what I mean.

Just an endless series of I and you
covering the planet

with colza beans and Cadillacs
as nobody used to say.

4.
Which leaves the streets wet
and the sky far away
as usual. I was going
to say that in French
but it would sound snarky
or show-offy, just like me,
comme d’habitude.

5.
You can tell I’m struggling
with anxiety, a whole brain
full of what its tenant
doesn’t want to think about.

Anxiety silences desire,
shrivels perception, cancels
meaningful speculation
about astronomy and history.

When smart poets are anxious
they keep quiet. Why don’t I
just go for a walk. Rain
never hurt anyone, did it?
Then I think of poor Chausson
dead in a bike crash—
what was the weather like
that day, and was he singing?

6.
The thing to do
is not say I today—
then there will be no one
to interfere with the song.
And it will all be song and sense and you.

2 September 2020