In Leopoldstadt by the station the drunks

piss in the open air. The Polizei prowl.

I called this place clean when I got here.

It is, relatively speaking. But it can take time to see dirt.

Like a kid at a window asking

how centuries fold and unfold,

how this crow stands now, un-cautious

un-concerned by interruption

determined no matter

how close you get

she will not fly.

How today in a haunted town

the rain is patient

and windows promise

to split our faces

How today in a hunting ground

we tell our stories in the only

wayward inadequate way

anyone knows how

And which parts will you remember best?

In German remembering's reflexive

Ich erinnere mich

to remember something

you must first remember yourself:

so it is easier to forget:

ich vergesse, es vergesst, wir vergessen.

How we repeat ourselves so faithfully

acting the parts we think we made

and echoing those who've come before

how much we need new ghosts to follow

And in his essay on forgetting, Freud

changed the verb to forget – so each time

we forget, we must forget ourselves:

ich vergesse mich –

and his editors silently corrected the proofs

forgiving what they saw

as his forgettings.

A match strikes between

what we feel for those we know and

the bewilderment of strangers

When of all the crowds to listen to

it's the dead who know the most

I thump my boot down

on a puddle and drops gush up

It is astonishing to be

alive, we say, which means

it is astonishing to be here

among these future dead

I spill into the Prater

walk the Hauptallee

I come here often enough to know

each night at five the horses come

tugging their carriages

back from the city.

I suppose I must remember myself

in order to remember them

as each night they remember

their own slick bodies, cold hooves, their

slack-lipped exhale into winter

all just to know their way home.