after John Yau
for E.H.

1.

What can I do, I didn't think you'd really call
What can I do, lousy as I am at happiness

What can I do, now that all
my watches have been broken

I will keep time by your teeth
as if you were Stonehenge

something accurate in another language
I didn't think you'd really call

there is no time left to stitch my costume
no time left to think up a future

for my fears to dismantle
lousy as I am at happiness


2.

What can I do, all the years that I hid
a stowaway in my own body

Lousy as I am at happiness
What can I do, now that I've seen

the late afternoon light
pink and yellow on your face

now that I know the word "enough"
now that your name is inside me


3.

What can I do, if your plane begins to smoke
and the color of disaster is in season

Now that this joy has beset me
my hips are like two black stones

waiting in white-water rapids
Now that you're coming in your little boat

What can I do, if one of us never again enters the concourse
and the other is left to walk among machines


4.

What can I do, lousy as I am at the present
and the past that wants to infiltrate each moment

What can I do, now that my coins
have turned their faces to the ground

only to whisper the future
in a voice too low for me to hear

What can I do, now that this paint is wet
now that this mirror is empty


5.

What can I do, now that the rust of grace
draws its own face over my features

I never stood in
the lifeboat of my own body

I never wore myself like a loose garment
allowing itself to gather

and unravel one breath at a time
What can I do, now that we have collided

in an underground tunnel
photons of light

calling themselves into matter


6.

What can I do, I've spent half my life
in love with some hologram or other

What can I do, now that I have set fire
to all the bridges in my body

now that I want to
be like the bridges

and turn myself into a torchlight
putting itself out in the water


7.

What can I do, every person on the subway
has also been specially chosen

doing the best they can in this moment
hurtling through the dark passage

now that I know there's a woman
who's 100 and can't cook

how can I trace the line of your jaw
without feeling her slack skin in my hands


8.

Now that my life has been painted in fugitive colors
and the moon has spilled its yellow in the bowl of the sky

Now that I understand bullfights
how the bull and the man are shy together

Now that my skin is a verb
everywhere your hands have been

Now that there are no more scarves
for me to pull from my mouth one by one

What can I do, I who meant
to spend my life in advance

and was lousy at happiness
I am amazed to realize

somehow it has gotten too late already
to pretend we are in a dark cinema