12/4/2002 San Francisco

dear k, k

loveable shadowy woman, at odds with the names of the world: you are my only contact here in this city of churches and ruined men, city unremorsefully colonized by the ageless sexless creatures of the future. they have strung their invisible wires through the air and i have tied myself to them in the hopes of hearing your footsteps.

i arrived as one must arrive at this city, by water, at sunrise. the ferry from Vallejo, where I left the bus in order to perform this useless ritual. watching the yellowing hills thought to myself, indeed i lived here, moved in and out of the buildings, wrote songs on Russian Hill and in divy tenderloin bars. days of black intoxication, smoky nights, angels in the mud puddles (says Borges); was in love, no joke.

strange that i have no sense of living here while i stay; only on leaving and arriving. she takes her lovers like a cat; she smiles to herself whenever she smiles. we get on each others’ nerves: her tall buildings, her bloodless sunset districts, the new york types, the stench of lucre, the eternal noise of cars.

i have brought you no rose. i found none that would keep. the rose of beauty, i could not possess, you already have. rose of knowledge, of protagoras, was lost at sunset. love i have lost it. myself. that bird of utter ignorance, perfect knowledge, bird albatross-winged and blood-breasted, no longer speaks to me and I have begun to realize that I must accept the possibility that it is absent having left at some moment i cannot place…

i mean that i have nothing to give you. i am spent up. my heart belongs to someone i cannot find, or name; my eyes are overwhelmed by the dust and bird feathers; i do not remember your name. but i would like to see you with that old jacket on watching the cold waters of the marina again.