One Curse the More to Sorrow

At two o’clock, the mathematician explains,
once more, his Theory of Limits, imagining 
I do not understand. Last night (I say)
I dreamt I was lost on a street that bore your name
and took refuge from the snow in a church: 
Notre Dame de Loreto, where god’s dream
is the world rounded to the nearest whole. 
Snow all afternoon. The room whitens
with the sound of our breathing.

Near five o’clock, a meadow bat sleeps
among the jade and amber folds of my skirt.
Its brown paper wings tremble,
as if death were sleep and sleep were no more
than a long blind dream of flight.

I watch without fear: the sleeping bat,
the raven circling the red walls of my room
with the grace of a ticking second hand.

These things—the world and its dying animals—
do not hold me to life.
I fear neither pain nor the end of pain.
I think I am conscious of a coming convalescence.