Transmission Lines

To G., visiting after ten years in 2001

    At first I did not remember the tree's name,
although in the next moment it arrived:
Locust. And in that lacuna the white blossoms
came on in magnification, making whiteness
all through me, and a breathlessness although
I could breathe. That was later, however,
when naming a poison and extracting it
came on as the task. And for that came the blossoms
and you, not in person but as phantom,
cleansing some reek of the ground. A keener friend.
Essential, there, that you not speak, and that I
not greet you, only half-knowing where I stood.
    Like someone tailing a wayward charge, your figure
trailed mine as I left a high hall. As ever,
your straight-hearted love of the Greeks pushed through
...