from Ann Lauterbach *If In Time*
selected poems, 1975-2000
Penguin

from *Quotations from Reality*

"Perhaps none of us ever believed
contemplating the acute world would rescue us
from it. Between frequency and absence
a world is missing in action, although
one is still friends with the bride. Lying
in bed, he proposes a new form of separation
and she accepts, feeling already radiant.
The song of praise from Catalonia
is energetic and glad as your niece
who is fourteen and no longer a virgin.

Barcelona is beautiful. I iknow
of a beautiful girl named Gloria Barcelona.
Once I thought there were instances of magic
until a philosopher friend, now dead, said
it was pure coincedence. He pretended to be
dying of cancer, then killed himself.
An acquaintance worte me the news on brown paper.
He left me his books, which I never got, but just
the other day you said: :*'The world is not the case.'"