Getting Over It

The thing you must know is

you cannot erase it:



not a hand, not the words

you are writing over and over on the blackboard,



the chalk-dust memory of anything fades

and this will not be graceful.



Where is your brother,

the one who reads your colorless dreams.



If a ladder and if stars,

If the cattle and if the leaves



You try to imagine the Nile,

the baby of it floating in the reeds,



the bony arm pulling you back—