Then the War

They planted flowers because the house had many rooms

and because they’d imagined a life in which

cut flowers punctuate each room, as if each were a sentence

not just to be decorated but to be given some discipline,

what the most memorable sentences—like people—always

slightly resist ... Spit of land; rags

of cloud-rack. Meanwhile,

hawk’s-nest, winter-nest, stamina as a form of faith, little

cove that a life equals, what they meant, I think, by

what they called the soul, twilight taking hold

deep in the marshweed, in the pachysandra, where the wind

can’t reach.

Then the war.

Then the field, and the mounted police

parading their proud-looking horses across it.

Then the next morning’s fog, the groundsmen barely visible

inside it, shadow-like, shade-like,

grooming the field back to immaculateness.

Then the curtains billowing out from the lightless room

toward the sea.

Then the one without hair

stroked the one who had some. They closed their eyes.

If gently, hard to say how gently.

Then the war was nothing that still bewildered them, if it ever had.