The Gift

People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do
—Stefan Zweig

Mid-war, mid-century, mitteleuropäisch.
And the starkness of a single line at the end of his biography

to which her journey led, her quiet entrances
and departures along its soft paths beside him.

Biographers echo him in describing her ‘failing health’.
It’s as if she slips away before him.

Where they describe him as ‘tired’, ‘discouraged’, ‘pursued’,
she is a silhouette—silent, except when she discusses ‘the servant question’.

She’s so fascinated by the breastfeeding that takes place in the gardener’s hut
he jokes about it in a letter to her brother. Only days before.

The photo placed between humble tumblers by the bed
shows them saying things to one another like

there’ll be a time for everything.
Saying that, without knowing it or feeling it

as she gives him

their reception into ‘the real life of Brasil’
their corner of a little town in the mountains, its steep becos

that always end in outbreaks of wildflowers
and rivulets, reminding him of Christmas baubles.

She gives him

days of such unseasonal rain and mist
the locals comment in amazement

when she (the ‘sensation’) descends to the brilliant oasis
of the Café Elegante for her daily gossip with the mule-drivers.

From the bed they can see, through the half-closed shutters,
the terrace where he works: the hydrangeas, green palisades

of the palms and beyond them that view of the hill,
its lifted shoulder as if cradling the town beside it,

the way she is found by the doctor
when he comes up the steep steps to view the bodies.

A Jokoban