A small muscle in my dog’s brow
unwolfs her. Desiring a treat—
essence of chicken parts—she makes
eyes at me. We want and want
and who we are is composed

of what we want. For what
morsels have I shaped my face?
Sitting up nights at a yellow table
in a dim kitchen, my father wanted

Canadian Club and pickled pigs’ feet.
Before the war he wanted, I think,
something else. His story stretched
past the carnage but not beyond
its memories. Mine assemble 

around dread and desire in forms
impenetrable. What’s difficult:
returning to places that shined—
a neighborhood, say, or a river

with a yearning bridge—after hope
is scrubbed out. We stretch between
that day and this one, naked
as an opening sky, as a pocked,
sodden field. Old age is fatal

even for revisionists, but sometimes
we try to get it right. Memory
is a kind of accomplishment, according
to Williams—a kind doctor, by all reports,

and no soldier. Nor was I. So
the dead face of a young boy
left in my charge hasn’t torn
my dreams. In private cinemas
we screen what we can’t dodge.