From Liontaming in America, which was published last month by New Directions.

I was reaching for a passage to the world they came from, the bodies slowly turning into the dirt from which I came.

A sentence shot with sleeplessness.

Something in the middle distance while my eyes are on the road.

I feel for a pen somewhere above the speed limit, clothed in metal flying just above the ground.

I write this sentence on a cliff above a lake.

A deer comes to look while I take something to get me through the twilight.

I write this as I carry its anonymity into the world.

I write it while the Atlantic flyway cries above my head.

I harry it on paths unmade by human passage.

I write it from the audience while silenced by the stage.

Long after the Xs have faded from the pages made of skin.

We are taking part in an eternal order, wrote Anni Albers as the spool ran out. We wander through their ruled lines and shelter in the trees.

This is how we leap from the fire to what comes next.

That’s how long the shadow falls.

The voice Augustine heard said “Read.”

The voice the boy heard said “Hear.”

Write this down.

Both roads led to Carthage.