To Find You

I came back to find you,
expecting you were waiting at Osh,
your mother distracted by a souvenir
of your father's other wife,
you skipping out with a lie and kisses
promising not to be late but holding
me in a dull park until you were full
of my words and an oath to return--
Promise tomorrow you said: Promise
you will come at six -- now you can go.

Searching for you
was like looking for the perfect snowflake,
for you were everywhere
and nowhere, the argent ring
your grandmother thrust at you
with a shackled whisper, never to lose it
as she pressed it into your
chapped and slender hand.
Never you said to her (at fourteen);
but then, after a month, at a birthday party,
you traded it for a box of mints.

I took the measure of your age.
I looked for you at every crosswalk, turn,
pushing through airports, searching queues
for Vienna, Moscow, Petrograd.
I returned hoping
there was a balcony in Bishkek where
you were coughing over a swig of Tequila.
"I will find her thin and unchanged",
Remembering the woman who sold us seats
To Aida at twice the local price
when she heard my accent,
and the day you stood in front of my chair
and would not let me twirl away,
locking me in your mad stare
until you could be certain of my sad love.
.
I cannot find you. You are evensong
sung by the ghosts who possessed you.
After failed unhappy days every night
is a closed shop, a taxi lumbering home,
me nodding in the back without you,
a park without lovers or oaths.

I sniff the air like a wolf thrown off track
by his beautifully feathered wolfen
prowling the potted tar of Asanbai,
towards Edgars, in and out of snow,
next to the Marx-Engels bronze,
remembering those last days without you--
silent, deathly, fearsome, pale--
the thwarted contrition, bloody vengeance,
hands beating errors on my chest,
a code without appropriate loving words
Oh my single white rose, braid, and ring.