Fells Point 

	We met Andre in a bar called the Whistling Oyster,
	drinking National Bohemian. He talked
	of his girlfriend, the japanese
	sex games they played; how he felt that morning,
	two years ago now, when the towers came down;
	the claddagh he wore on his ebony finger.

	I asked about the roots thing, America’s obsession
	with antecedents. Joe spoke, said that
	this is a country where you can be anything;
	Andre coughed and tapped his arm:
	a simple, black reminder. 


	The Chinese Screen 

	Something new has been erected here
	in the concrete garden between Merz Court
	and the quad. A wooden Oriental screen, a Chinese
	seat, squat-splayed and backless, red, and curled
	like Dali’s moustache. Is it a love-seat? No:
	the screen is cross-hatched, a carved wooden net, affording
	no privacy. But you were not brought here to see
	
	the seat. Walk further. Stop. This tree, demoniac
	calligraphy, two-dozen branches flailing from the earth
	and lashed out, crazed, like history, is what I want
	to show you. Observe how each branch
	terminates in a bud. See the number of branches; imagine
	the energy slowly unfolding, while we grow and graduate, study
	and copulate, fight and grow fat; hear the effort, the unfurling

	push to the bud. The tree is only
	for the bud; for fruit, for seed. The tree exists
	for other trees, not yet imagined, still ungrown. 
	All else – the beauty, flower and form –
	is an addition. And this campus, where it sews
	itself intensely into time, is our addition:
	what we have clothed our simple will-to-life in.

	These – the buildings, gothic, modern and post-
	modern, and the gardens and the paintings and the
	theses and exams, and the nights out at the union, 
	the yearly congregations; and the city, and the railway,
	and the roads which give it context - are the terms of our refusal
	to live only for the bud. They are the ways in which we,
	every day, are more. 


	Coming Back (not coming back) 

	We can’t get away from this today.
	There’s silence at our table
	while the patrons are all dancing. 
	I remember and reflect your memories,
	it’s clear: and as much as I love you
	I’ll always remind you of horror.

	You won’t say as much. We’ll know.
	I’ll wish you’d give the order you won’t give
	because I’ll follow it:
	if I have to leave so you can live I’ll leave,
	but I don’t want to leave.