You can say the broken word but cannot speak
for it, can name a precise and particular shade
of blue if you can remember its name
(Woman of the South, New Lilac, Second Sky?)

As the light, close to blinding, fell—falls
in bars across a particular page, this
then another, some other
followed far too closely by night

Or as the sleeping
pages recall themselves, one by one,
in dream-riddled, guarded tones,
recall themselves from path

to sloped meadow, meadow
to burnt shore, shore
to poised wave, dismay
to present, any present

of the bewildered and the buried alive
(we've been told they were buried alive)
Is there a door he hasn't noticed
and beyond it a letter which created the door

or claims it created a door
which would open either way