I write your name for the last time in this mist, White breath on the windowpane, And watch it vanish. No, it stays there. - Charles Wright

It may not be written in any book, but it is written — You can’t go back,
you can’t repeat the unrepeatable.

Meanwhile, the mole goes on with its subterranean daydreams,
The dogs lie around like rugs

What we are given in dreams we write as blue paint,
Or messages to the clouds.
At evening we wait for the rain to fall and the sky to clear.
Our words are words for the clay, uttered in undertones,
Our gestures salve for the wind.

We sit out on the earth and stretch our limbs,
Hoarding the little mounds of sorrow laid up in our hearts. — Charles Wright, closing lines to “Homage to Paul Cézanne,” The Southern Cross: Poems (Random House, 1981)