Damion Searls

Poem

Abroad again. Even the houses are dancing.

In all the uncertainties of Amsterdam

I reread old diaries to remember who I am: there’s Happy Donut—none of your usual morose donuts here!— and songs with the names of towns in them and wicked, wicked Caroline.

Is any place better without a lover? At least some make you want to learn, not do: the rain beating on the skylight like Paul Klee’s Timpanist, the sound of a Van Gogh painting, a nap outside beneath medieval walls—none of it a “force of nature.” Learning not doing is a form of forgetting.

The Berkeley conference on trace elements has explained this easily detectable weight loss to our complete satisfaction; on the ocean you can learn the rest of the stars, all the way to the horizon.

This guy in Zagreb knows forty languages but he’s crazy.