It makes nothing, this world, just empty return
upon itself like snow that snows and blots
out the surface roots of a tree. Windburn

dogs a woman out for a jog who knots
her eyes looking for the cross light. She sees
and goes. The slush will slick the road tonight

for a wreck, but now in the gutter a dull sluice seizes
the day. Hurray. How our lives go. Even
in lightest Italy, where marble friezes

pit from pollution and fathers caress forgiven
parish members too closely. When in Rome . . .
Erasure. The Bosnian street boy, driven

to thieving, when caught near the Hippodrome,
has the presence to say, “Non faccio niente.”
And later, when snow falls on the Pantheon’s dome,

he goes for shelter in that grand space of nothing.