“Paris is a place where things are not as they are called.”
— e.e. cummings (Paris, 1917)

Dear Father — I am well. The room is small.
The Seine runs wide and clean. The bread is good.
I’ve seen the painters work along the wall
where voices break — then thin — I’ve understood
no single thing — or everything at once —
the rain strikes different here — on stone,
through skin — I find myself a kind of dunce
who cannot conjugate what he has known
(a sparrow on the sill)
the pen lifts — stays —
(bonjour) (the rain)
what falls here does not grieve —
dear father —
i am learning how to leave
the large word for the small — the sparrow sings —
and i am well — and well is everything.

“Not ideas but in things.”
— William Carlos Williams (Paterson, 1946)

Dear Father — I am ill. The noontide pour
unspools the day; my work is done.
The hands that knew their way before
are listless past a changing sun.
The plums I ate that Flossie set aside,
they tasted good. They tasted. Good. A measure
of the smallest vices: cold, unjustified.
So much depends on simple pleasures:
there upon the window sill,
a sparrow rests in counterpoint to crow
and cockerel; dips its narrow bill
to pick for mites, its shadow
cast against the bedroom wall,
my body in abeyance. That is all.