The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel | Poetry Foundation

None of us spoke as we checked out, our words suddenly wrong everywhere, even in our mouths.

It is not precisely accurate to say that nothing has changed. It’s all farther along. And it is quieter. And the quiet is emptier. At night, walking the streets, it is especially noticeable. You can hear things settling, the way an old house settles. Creaking and popping. Some buildings are tilting into the fill on which they were built. Walls buck

poem called “Married”: I came back from the funeral and crawled around the apartment, crying hard, searching for my wife’s hair. For two months got them from the drain, from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator, and off the clothes in the closet. But after other Japanese women came, there was no way to be sure which were hers, and I stopped.