Of course I don't call her G sela. The toddler and the stout grey-haired woman walk out of the small park toward the shopping streets into a present tense where what's ineffaceable repeats itself. She runs behind. The almost-silent thud. G sela, prone, also silent, on the ground.
Death is the scandal that was always hidden.
I knew she was dead. A black woman, to whom I wasn't nice, was hired to look after me. Her Selected Poems was awarded the Poets' Prize in 1996. Her new book, Squares and Courtyards , will be published by W.W. Norton in January 2000. She lives in New York and Paris, and is now director of the M.A. program in English literature and creative writing at City College.