The Passages of Extra-Solar Planets

We believe when you compose
And then erase and delete,
You leave traces in your texts,

Not like the ghosts painters leave
Under a reworked canvas,
There being no physical

Shadow, necessarily,
Of your lost lines and curses—
Only a faint disturbance

Left with the meanings of words
Whose companions were taken
From us too soon, a wobble,

Almost gravitational,
In ideas that seem to lack
Some present kind of notion

In our consort, something gone,
Or still there, as a darkness
Can make a star’s light shiver.