For X.
If evil had style
it might well resemble
those pointless experiments
we used to set up and run
with our legs and our hands
and our mouths between two
and four p.m. while our kids
were swimming in the public pool
and our wives, or husbands,
were somewhere else—
an hour when nobody wanted
to move, the heat
had gone breathless, slack
as if the afternoon
had been punched in the stomach,
a victim of what we’d coolly
decided to do. There might
be the nagging of a single mower.
At last even that would die
in the heat. We could catch
a rumor of thunder in the hills-
a signal, like the smirk
of swallowed amusement you’d slip
my direction by raising just
slightly your eyebrows as much
as to ask, Well? Shall we?
Its style might well resemble
the wholly gratuitous gear
we would then shift down to
as deliberately we would undress,
our eyes wide open, without
compromise, curious to observe what
a body might be up to next
on such a hopeless afternoon,
just barely affection
enough a pinch of salt—
to produce that sigh, when
for a lucky moment or so
curiosity can be mistaken
for enthusiasm and we learn
what we already know.
Leave a Reply