It becomes more difficult to remember
names—the brain says
farewell before I’m ready. Who

did I bring to my bed, that winter
day, thin light in the upstairs
room near Powder House Square, Nordic

paleness above, before me, once
and never again? She stays,
nameless guest in the smoky room

of goodbyes, where everything else—
the snow, the sky, the droning
traffic outside—is the future’s

dissolution of this flesh, the turning
of life to ghosts in the mind,
the slow ritual of neural tissue,

music to which time is unblessed.
What’s left in the room—unidentified
eyes, shaded shoulder and breast.