Pursued by Love's Demons | The Nation

As if the back streets of our local city

might dispense with their pyrrhic accumulation of dust and wineful
tonality,

offer a reprise of love itself, a careless love

rendered grand and persuasive

by its own shy handful of hope, some ballast such as this

on a summer afternoon when the air smells of slaughtered chickens,

and other problems, like the estranged spouse of a good friend,

holler from the passageway. It's always conclusive

in the bungled moment after you try to accomplish something irreducible.

So you say as you return empty-handed from the store,

having forgotten everything--your money, the list.

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