Memory snips around stories Like a seamstress cutting patterns from the raw, The material form. The old work of storytelling: Tucking hems and mending holes.   Time splits, frays like a rope. Who's to say If Beowulf slew Grendel first or Speared the Niceras. Could he be in two places? Could all stories be cut from one, and the same?   This fine weave is a tangle of lives, And there is nowhere for a straight cut. Before the telling comes the story, the story Has one hero and one title: City.