The white wall
followed us
as we walked
up into the hills,
we came to a chapel
where some sort of priest
was chopping dead branches
so you took it into your head
to go to confession to him
and you began.
                                   The wall
looked on. I tried
not to overhear
what you took to be your sins,
I know what I know
and don’t need your innocent fantasies.
When you stopped mumbling
the priest mumbled something in turn,
in some other language.
Then he said what sounded like
he had never seen an American on his knees before,
then he went back to chopping wood
and the wall moved forward,
uphill still, and we followed,
anxious to read our shadows
moving on it as we walked.

2.
A wall is a friendly comrade,
doesn’t need food, holds tight
to all the light it can, a white
wall especially. You and I were
lucky to have one for a friend.
We thought at first that it
was with us, then realized
after a few miles that we
were with it, it guided us
uphill by the gleaming
glamor of its emptiness.

3.
We were at the hilltop now,
a few boulders scattered about,
evidence some glacier past
had shaped this land. Xenoliths
you remarked, foreign stones
I understood. The wall rested.
I wanted to know why
you had told the priest so much
you never told me, did you want
me just to overhear so as not
to have to respond? No, you said,
I was talking to the wall, wanted
our wall to know the company it’s keeping.
But don’t you know, I said,
a wall knows everything?
Every person near a wall
leaves his full history in it.

4.
You doubted that. I admit
my statement was extreme—
no flowers and no birds,
no pretty people gamboling on imagined lawns,
just the sense of things sinks in,
the sense of us, Bach’s music
deep in the walls of that Leipzig church.
Speaking of priests.

5.
I suppose I was right.
I suppose the wall would have stopped me
if I said wrong—
A wall is a most truthful friend,
couldn’t even lie if it tried.
And it doesn’t try. So you and I
are left with our xenoliths and the sky
while the wall breathes patiently
alongside. It will rain soon,
I think, please, wall, take us home.

6.
Not so fast—rain loves you too
the wall explained. And think
how I will glisten as
rain sleeks me down!
You haven’t even heard
the question yet—
how will you know it
when the answer comes?
Stay here with the sky,
stay here with me,
a wall is the only real thing
humans ever made,
a silence in the endless song,
a comma in the unending sentence–
forgive my eloquence,
it’s all I have.

7.
So we remained.
It rained, and we remembered.
The wall indeed was lovely
in shimmering, awash with downpour.
We kept to the lee side of the wall
that kept us wet but not drenched,
The wall itself had some
colloquy with the wind,
the way they do, arguing,
the wind toying gladly angry
with each new obstacle
while we shivered.
You were glad
you had gone to confession.
I wished I had some sins to confess—
I thought about what sins
I would have liked to have committed
until the rain stopped.
We shook our clothes, tried
to act normal, followed the wall
downhill this time, the wall
speaking to us of a river,
a river that was to come.

24 March 2021