Of course there has to be a reason, doctor:
I’m late because I was early, not
on time to reach your office
in time—that will come
with time. Meanwhile, just to while away
the time ahead, I lingered …
No, officer, I’m not loitering
here, only looking, like these other people,
at the wreckers while they work.
We stood there staring,
doctor, as the great steel ball
rummaged gently through what used to be
your rooms—all those hours
collapsed so easily, just a touch does it
snapping off the pipes, twisting
girders, leaving (obscenely) the patch of green
wall with the Edwardian molding
I could make into a groin,
sometimes, from the couch.
Then the crane took it all, clearing out
the rubble in one or two bites, big ones though,
and drooling the leftovers.
It was at that moment, doctor, as I watched,
I knew for once, at once, what we have
come to call, in our sessions,
my resistances,
the ligatures and liens on a life
I could not gladly let go.
There they were, still, and above them rose
slowly into the already littered air
a cloud of white plaster dust.
For all the ruptured
tubes and ripped-out masonry,
it was quite silent, actually
tranquil as the last
laths went, and I turned away, late already
for you, doctor, wondering
as I hurried to the new address, the clean
partitions, if those waiting others
were your patients too, watching
themselves come apart.
Did you know, officer, that loiter
derives from loutish, from lurk, even from lie?
Does that make it easier?
Hopkins said the mind has mountains, he was wrong:
it has plumbing and plaster, parquet
and marble shards like this one
I am fingering;
and such intestinal obstructions
go up in a little smoke,
witnessed by uneasy bystanders
waiting, like me, now that I am here at last,
for the new sutures to be
fastened, made fast
among all this bright Finnish
furniture. Waiting, doctor, for that
old visitation,
the unreconstructed self, to take revenge
for a wrecked interior
decoration, a few flimsy walls knocked down
which stand, yet no longer standing, for
years of my mind where I could
call myself my own.
Doctor, I’m afraid (that old ghost story)
I’m late. Sorry to have been malingering.
We must begin all over…
Leave a Reply