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Nothing

My mother is scared of the world.

She left my father after forty years.

She was like, Happy anniversary, goodbye;

I respect that.

The moon tonight is dazzling, is full

of itself if not quite full.

A man should not love the moon, said Miłosz.

Not exactly. He translated himself

as saying it. A man should not love translation;

there’s so much I can’t know. An hour ago,

marking time with someone I would like to like,

we passed some trees and there were crickets

(crickets!) chirping right off Divisadero.

I touched his hand, and for a cold moment

I was like a child again,

nothing more, nothing less.

from ProprietaryFind it in the library

Copyright © Persea Books 2017
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Persea Books.

Published in Poems Randall Mann

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