March Dawn

for Dawn Delbanco

Likelihood, luck, improvisation,
the meet-your-eye-in-the-mirror
epiphany. Spring opens up the sky:
more light, more space. But wait.
Bomb in the airport.  Bomb on the subway.
In the market. In the playground.
Brussels. Lahore.  No but. No wait. And and:
patient parataxis,
my teacher Robert Fagles used to say,
not hypotaxis. No subordination.
Homeric syntax was what he had in mind:
this and this and this and this.
Subway and airport and concert hall.
Blood and soft green spring.
Children at play and scattered limbs.
...