by Jonathan Weinert

                for Paul Celan

1            I’m reading poems on the train, when

something makes me look away—a beautiful line

I wish I’d written. 

2                             Out there

the river’s a black wire, like the river

in a Russian novel. Everyone’s unhappy

in the story with the river. 

3                                         A man

is running at the edges of some trees. His footsteps cut 

a shallow furrow in the snow. He’s running from his death, 

which thrusts at him with eyed, enormous wings. 

4                The snow-field glares, 

an eye without an iris. He’s the pupil—black, 

because he gathers all the light. 

5                                                    He passes 

underneath some grackled wires, out across the causeway 

to the river. Underneath its black-ice jacket current crackles,

gapping Boston Harbor and the sea. 

6                                                           In the snow

the skyline could be Stalingrad’s, or Dresden’s. 

He wonders how he could have stayed so long 

in the one place, now his death has found him, perching 

on the pilings where the rush breaks free. 

7                                                                   I read 

Oh ice of unearthly red—their hetman wades with all

his troop into darkening suns, shocked

by those unshielded lines.