The Problem

“You can’t have everything,” they say. But the problem is
you do. On quiet days, according to Bellini, each face is filled
with its own far-away death, quietly nearby
like an old friend who knows how to remain silent.
And then there are the chalky white roads
that wind through the distance in his paintings,
barely visible at dusk, roads that run all the way to the edge
of the frame, then stop. Our hearts stop with them,
cry out, cannot be consoled: and that, too, is having everything.