Sometimes she imagines it will happen this way / that it has happened already,and she stands remembering / that it is happening now, in the dawn of herimagining—her body a wisp of air in a drafty corridor, stirred in the wake ofher passing.              Then, as before sleep, she will move through the rooms, turning thelamps off one by one: cities, loves, animals, all the nights and days dissolving inair behind her,              until she stands light and alone among solid things, indifferent witnessesthat persist without memory, though they furnished its many rooms. Her handmoved them, as she herself was moved—drawn, by something apart from them.Cold clarity of a knife blade, glint of sun on the rim of a glass.Some action seems required of her: some provision made for these durablegoods, her possessions. She would return them with a note of thanks:               The French oak desk to the wild pigs of the Midi, who foraged in its absent shade              The feather home to the goose, and the conch to its salt terrain              The red rug to the yurt– to the ewe– to the wild grass of the Caucasus              Back to bone and silica the china; this silk to the mulberry leaf              Each forged thing to its atomic weight, its elemental body But they will not go. Time is flowing forward again; sunlight gilding thisstill room in the house of the mind that deplores a vacancy as, then and now,the Occupant looks up from her writing to trace particles of dust driftingeverywhere in air, alighting on every surface.