LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF MY DAYS AS AN IDEALIST

You urge me, after so many years of silence, to send you details about my occupations, about this "wonderful" world in which, you say, I am lucky enough to live and move and have my being. I might answer that I am a man without occupation, and that this world is not in the least wonderful.

—E.M. Cioran, "Letter To A Faraway Friend"

How far I have come to wish

to come home. This morning,

the first in twenty-three

exiled years, the white noise

of commerce eclipsed my only dream

of childhood: the dull boots

and swollen faces of bodies hang-

ing from streetlamps. Your letters

and wishes for my life here

arrive whitened by a belief

in this country like a trinket

of light perfect and invisible.

What has not changed and what

has are identical. 28 years earlier,

Chinese tanks and soldiers rolled

over students. Here whole families

sleep on sewer grates and barter

for whatever one might spare.

Yesterday, a pigeon appeared on

my desk and pecked at your letters.

My cat caught it in mid-flight.

The argument of its wings

surprised him into letting it go.