1.

The city is empty without you.
I spend many hours each day in the museum,
where there has been a scandal! I wonder
if you remember their prize exhibit,
the ``Landscape with Gray Eminence''? What murk!
They cleaned it for the Exposition--and now we see
it is ``Psyche and Eros''! The signature seems genuine,
but all the guidebooks have had to be rewritten.
I wish you were here, to give your opinion.
 
 

2.

How we thought we knew the city!
And so we did. Still, I have found places
we never saw (I think you never saw them):
a cave where some children lived; a pile of rats' bones.
But that was long ago, before things changed.
I have not gone back to that quarter again.
 
 

3.

She is leaning over him.
Clean sheets surround him.
He may be asleep, or wondering
how he got into that bed.
Maybe it's snowing outside.
Somewhere there is a wonderful blank.

Do you remember our first visit?
You kept our ticket stubs, and the curator
gave you carte blanche. Years later he ran amuck
with his bucket of bleach, wanting to clean
all the rest of the pictures. You were no longer here.
The city is empty. I think of you often.