From a six mile tunnel under the mountains
it happened to the wide open plain.
The trees skipped the way they do
to dodge the hurtling machines.
For a lovely morning moment
everything was just as it is.

2.
She remembered that
from her place on the balcony
you could see only a little of her
through the lattice under the poppies
(Eschscholzia californica), boxes
of cereals on the ledge
peace offerings to the birds.
She was busily remembering
a whole other continent
sometimes it’s amazing
to think one is actually here.
When two white-throated sparrows
(o how sad their song can be!)
flew away she went back to her book.

3.
Back in France the trees calmed down,
the road had the look of noontime,
empty, everywhere somewhere else.
How small we animals really are
compared to what is actually there—
you could feel the quiet sun
hinting gently something like that,
o so many reminders needed
and every step a road of its own.

4.
When the rain began
she shook the first drops
off the page she had forgotten
to keep reading, she hurried
inside and left the flowers to the rain,
such things need such things.
She shook her hair dry
and went to the fridge
where the past was stored
mostly in glass—nobody
trusts plastic anymore.
I really was there once,
she thinks, I really saw
the tunnel end and the world
come back the way it should always be,
just there, calm, leaving it
to me to do all the being,
moving around. Nothing
caught her fancy in the cold.
She shut the door—better
to go hungry than blunt
the keen arrow of human appetite
by eating something not desired
just because it’s there.
She wishes it would stop raining
so she could go sparrowing again.

5.
Less done less to regret
she remembered an old nun
saying that. Outside
a car went by hooting its
boy noise out its windows
never mind the rain.
Never mind, those things pass by.
She watched the wall, aware
that it was telling her
a little bit about what she
didn’t want to think about—
one more reminder!

OK, Wall, what happened in France?

You loved everything you saw
but wanted something else.
It cost so much just to get here
where you began, just to see
me again, your brand-new wall
that knows all the secrets of
every room you ever lived in,
what one wall knows, another
can repeat—that is the fact
of walls that humans build,
one wall knows all.

6.
That’s all about you
she cried almost angry
at the plaster, but
what about me?

Are you so different
from me? said the wall,
don’t you know you are
everywhere you have ever been,
that tunnel under the Vosges
debouches I think the word is
right into your living room,
right here, city, actual, holy, blessed.

O wall I’m sorry
I know you mean well,
or mean wall,
whichever is truer, better,
but what am I after,
why does the book end
and leave me here alone,
where do sparrows go
when they don’t see me?

I pray for you, said the wall,
because I only know
what you know,
I am your wall, plus all walls,
when they first built walls
ten thousand years ago in Turkey
they said their own prayers
so that all walls should be
a little bit like gods,
holding and protecting
and even remembering—
but no more. A wall
doesn’t know the future—
if it did it could not stand.
But I can pray, and do,
and keep the thieves away.

7.
But maybe she wanted the thief,
it takes a thief
to show you the worth
of what you have.
What they want to steal
is where I should begin
she thought. The rain stopped,
so did a bus at the corner,
she went onto the balcony,

there is clarity
even in not knowing,
knowing, knowing,
the sparrow said.
Maybe just trying to know
is a kind of knowing
and maybe knowing is enough.

10 September 2020