German Cities

Next week he will be away, auditioning:
Stuttgart. Frankfurt. Hamburg. Berlin.
We talk about music, style, discipline.
The great composers
between our lips. He sings and speaks
with the voice of a priest, father, or devil.
I pull on my jeans: in my pocket,
the department store strip of paper
sprayed with cologne.
The garden that enters
the room is the garden of a childhood
in Munich; the naked old men
who smoked along the banks of the river
are dead now. My pocket smells of masculine lavender.