Doppelganger Music

Must I again wake from dreams of March storms

to see you walking through the window

from the night that loves you, from the March

storm you bring in with you, that takes your shape

in hollow sheets, molds them with your vagabond

hands, cold and unstained by ragged rain?

Loose pages swim the room like wet leaves.

Could you close the cold outside

the way you close storm-colored eyes, leave

wind alone to drive the nearest branches

against dripping glass, scrawling

transparent obscenities? Come to bed. Instead you

read out loud, Yeats—for a moment that's

the libel the wind is scribbling, and as usual

I don't understand. Clouds paint the pane

with splattered rain, the scrape of naked branches

seep through the blinds at five, or six by now,

muddied daybreak clambers like an animal

over the sill, splays itself across the window

shamelessly. Tick tick. Pulled down at last

into my own private sea, I wake at noon

to sheets keeping your shape again, restless

pages weighted with a window

closed to the wind still talking

to itself (still incomplete, filled with lapses, empty

phrases), damp branches ticking off the minutes

to which raddled leaves spill in time, you

wandering your nowhere once more.