Someone is plastering the roof with cement, while I am
Reading a poem about peanut butter
I lift my head, to let the water run back to the pool
He descries the woman crying in the window across the street
And turns to pick up the peach-shaped spatula to kiss
The seam between the chimney and the slanting roof

That afternoon with nowhere to go, across
The dense forest
Lying on slanting fallen leaves
My lover kissed the sutures on my right chest
Unsprouted black twigs lacerating the sky

Words that were closest to the bone, not even one
Would I utter

His hands are filled, with gravel about to be hurled
Each blackbird is waiting
For the water in the seam
The Ugandan woman sticks a knife into
The sweet potato in the center of the oven
A six-year-old lion learned yesterday that the sharpest part of a knife was
Called blade. I fear pain; the screenplays I wrote initially
Were all about captivity

On your sunken left chest
Is sutured a slanting cross

The Ugandan woman asks me, normally
What is on my mind?
Someone is on the roof across the street
Plastering it with cement for several days on end
Next to a riverside about to make a bend
A flock of blackbirds is making their nests on the treetops
You said, I'm going to bed
I'm going to bed
While I was bracing for the rain to return
The cloth you ordered by mistake on the web

While I was away, you breathed your last

The shadow on the surface
Runs deeper than the water