I left the hospital and drove home in the rain,

windshield wipers beating out of sync

with the music the radio relayed. The very first

thing I remember is irrecoverable. For all their

advantages, electronic balance statements

demand the same expenditures of attention.

Take, for instance, those rolling briefcases — easier

surely on the back, but an inexplicable assault

on canons of taste, or bourgeois individualist

schemata of strength and self-reliance.

Experience fades from moment to moment, and leaves

no marks in the folds of my subjectivity.

The tragedy of grief is that I can no longer feel

grief, that my eyes roll like the earth’s sphere

over words he scribbled in margins

and like the earth’s sphere neither slow

nor stop. Goldfinches in the trees

indicate migratory season, and the increase

of nocturnal birdsong. Our avian

listening, infused with pleasure, bespeaks

a kindred echo perceived, the interpellation

of a sensitive ideal. The humanist

put down his pipe and scratched his beard,

composed a mordant footnote, only

to strike out half its words. “I’ve blacked out

twice today from the medication

for my mental illness and don’t think

I should be driving.” A closer examination

of premises, and failing that, the search team

should move on (“downward”?) through

layers of clammy, decaying, even verdant

self-deception: something will turn up in the end.

Many are sold, but the view is chosen.