Archival
Among dilapidated horses we were habits on our way from outpost to outpost
uninaugurated cries issuing from all the tipped over places.
As it was in the first day we were given a body
with its coming ambushes of second loves and other steep reckonings.
Which clench, which tense, which hunger were not yet questions.
Just now in the unexpected rain white moths, shorn of their bodies
are dying by the thousands against planes of glass.
Before the iron doors I am instructed to push a sequence of buttons.
This must be where the exits are kept
hidden behind the symbol for moat or snow or sparrow.
Now I know I will follow a long river valley until my dialect is unrecognizable
remembered only by what sang from the westernmost districts
or by the words I used in search of others--
rind salt heat lure thistle