“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.