The pluperfect forms of summer
are wrong—slits of light like wheat.
It is the world that doesn’t speak,
the throat in its chambers
that drones for us. And constellations?
They are smaller flowers that burn
their way into the refrain above me.
My grandchildren, fragrant
with the smoke of their gardens,
speak for me, stand next to me
as I receive this message.
A hall is not methodical,
it is a dark thread.
The stars are those remoter forms
whose eyes are green and pink—
I am unable to see them.
To be a boy again in Switzerland.