This is the city of things lost
in gaps between a Sunday afternoon
and all of time, the things that had the stamp
of spirit on them once and are now lost
in gutters, or beneath the railway bridge,
ensconced in the peripheries of parks,
preserved from shades of meaning and remembrance:
old pa**port photographs, a watch or two,
and whiskey bottles filling up with dew,
house keys, a left hand glove, loose change, the grime
that lathers them when dog-day winds return,
and rain that pummels them in wintertime.
Unburied and unelegized they lie:
we have no ritual for what we lose,
only curt curses for them now and again
until we loose them out beyond our ken.