“To exchange signals with Mars—without fantasizing, of course—that is a task worthy of a lyric poet.”

         —Osip Mandelstam

Of course, the secret aim
of losing you those months
had been to find you again.

I went looking for what
had once belonged to you,
found a voice to cauterize

the wound. I made it through
April, May, June; it seemed
I had outsmarted grief

but pulled the hanged man
card repeatedly—the self-same
sorrow said a different way.
You who cannot hear me
without injury, I whisper,
I damage the throat like this,

I, my own entrapment
and hardest to forgive.
Only this life still and all

its boxes filled, its hours
spent fretting over living wills,
the horror of numbers
and headlines on Mars—
more water, more life
where it cannot be touched.