The fire swept our narrow house.
How can I wash away the stink?
Why do I have to keep recovering,
hoarding zero like a gem?
All day she tallies our singed books,
sheets with little scrawls of soot.
When will I scrub away the stain?
We lock the list in a Sentry safe.
This city is huge; a thousand fires.
At midnight ambulances surge and fade
to Saint Luke, Methodist, Maimonides.
She murmurs beside me, tense in a dream.
A siren whisks away its shriek.
The fire almost took her life.
Tense in a dream, our city is huge.
Who can count the changing lights?
D. NURKSE is the author of ten books of poetry. Recent awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
