It’s late, Kostya; the street is swept clean
by the sleep of strangers, by continual rains.
The pulp of the evening-paper
Smashed into the curb,
the headlines trickling away by twos; Kostya, I swear
my mother was in that paper once. She was at a protest,
the light was on her braids. I found it curled in an old letter,
I was searching for something to wrap my tobacco in…
Kostya, grant me this, a puff
of smoke, obscuring your eyelids
then taken up by the wind; this is love—
the light on two braids, a yellow paper,
stained fingers, the smell of drowsy incense,
the trees so long dizzy with drought
letting the raindrops slide through their bony fingers.