love poem

Waking
on the train, I thought  
we were attacked

            by light:  
chrome-winged birds  
hatching from the lagoon.

            That first day  
the buoys were all  
that made the harbor

            bearable:
pennies sewn into a hemline.  
Later I learned to live in it,

            to walk
through the alien city—
a beekeeper’s habit—

            with fierce light  
clinging to my head and hands.  
Treated as gently as every

            other guest—
each house’s barbed antennae  
trawling for any kind

            of weather—
still I sobbed in a glass box  
on an unswept street

            with the last
few lire ticking like fleas
off my phonecard I’m sorry

            I can’t
stand this, which
one of us do you love?