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Published: Tue Jul 1 2008
Eva Lundsager, Were now like (detail), 2021, oil on canvas
The monocle is a circle the eye is a circle

after Tristan Tzara

The monocle that walked with you
Rolled off the curb
Lay still in the wet leaves

The poems fell from the trees that year
With sugar crystals in their veins
Reminiscent of summer

Those leaves that were a thousand fingers
In summer pointing this way and that
Until the road your companion got lost

Among a thousand arrows labeled this way
And I remember you used thumb and flower
No, finger, to screw that lens

To your right eye
The late blooming flower of focus became you
Leaves drifted down, until

Heather Green is the author of the poetry collection No Other Rome (Akron Poetry Series, 2021) and the translator of Tristan Tzara’s Noontimes Won (Octopus Books, 2018). She teaches in the School of Art at George Mason University. (updated 10/2022)

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