Hoffmann woke from thirst. The grey
gold hum of morning was leagues away.
The night he'd finished translating
from the Portuguese (a work out of Macau?) -
“These city people are different
in their troubling fantasies...”

In Warsaw he had left Hippel,
an advocate, like him,
of bilingual education. The native peaks
of Rosicrucian churches
now seemed, like the tea-cups,
fractal in the light.