The Conditions

 

I wrote my father.

The pencil smelled of turpentine.

It was spring and snowing.

I wrote:

Come visit, 

Come back to Helsinki—

We’ll drink coffee

Between noon and three

In the Café Strindberg.

 

The light of the setting sun 

Played across the curls

Of a woman holding a cigarette. 

She was looking 

With extraordinary fixity 

At some distant point, 

A woman with red hair.

 

The letter sat on my table

Like the others

Then it went underground 

Into the northern marl 

And I think possibly 

The eyes of a cat saw it—

One of those prodigal creatures 

Who see such things 

And nothing means nothing wherever they walk.