The Imitation of Things Familiar

                England

At dawn, the doves practice their imitations of owls
or their American cousins, featureless as souls.

How did they spot us, fresh off airport ramps,
our passports steaming with new stamps?

The girls from the sixth-form college look
bedraggled and oppressed, as if they took

from school no more than names and dates.
Everything, for them, has happened too late—

the dead are just their secret sharers.
Like anything built of love, the past is whispers;

or is it like water, indifferent and cruel,
poured into a language strange as Istanbul?

As we get older, we stare into all-too-deep abysses.
The pools we love were once loved by Narcissus.