To My Biographer
Leave out everything
Save for the evening
I stepped into the lilacs
As if through a wall
Into which blossoms
Were set at random
Like a hundred lanterns
In recessed niches
And sat in the drone
Of bees who within
Days would be dead
Who landed on my skin
But didn’t sting
Were you a boy when
This happened
Or a man you ask
It happened twice
Once at the beginning
And once near the end
When I needed to
Remember
What it had been
Like the first time