For Michael Halberstam

Excerpt

Heartwords, murmurs of meaning

you recovered intact—

private sounds uttered in confidence to a doctor

who listened in awe, and then translated . . .

into prose.

Was it because . . .

Was it because you entered, hearing,

others' lives that you wrote?

"I practice medicine full time and then write about it," you said.

But were you able, ever, to convince your patient,

reading your words as you listened to his,

that you were listening, together, to the same sound,

that writing is recruitment,

the translation of one's audible being

into another's,

a message received,

a message enriched,