where you can still see people with pen
and paper. Legal pads, spiral bound,
plain or college-ruled loose leaf, well-thumbed sheaves
of paper at every crumb-strewn table: precis,
postulations, undergraduate observations, sound
doctoral theory, a shady spot of fiction -
each hand the only one in the world
to produce such symbols, personal as finger-
prints, errant y's and flighty t's,
g's trailing their tails like apprehensive
dogs. It's a deep, low-ceilinged room, illuminated
dimly by porcelain snowdrops on the walls,
a foreign spring, ripe with words' secret burning.
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