It occurs to me that I too could possess
a profound truth, which is unlike me. The birds perched
in the pine tree across the street are elaborate
in a way I’m not. I came into
a flat country. I made very little noise.
The way a bookcase is literally half its future
when the first book is placed
in its shelves, I too was nearly all I’d become
in that first serious light.
My worst fear is that this will mean
only as much as you make of it.
All the same, it has that element of confession,
of vigilance and breaking apart, which is me: I
once dropped a letter onto a river,
your letter, and as I stood there in the damp grass
it had been raining—the letter floated off
until I lost sight of it;
at the end of the river there were lights,
and there was music drifting out over the water,
and your letter, about then,
must have gotten heavy and gone down.
I don’t mean to thwart you in this book.
At the outset I had planned to ignore you
altogether, to leave a whole chapter
blank, near the end,
entitled: “The Likeness Finally Deflected.”
I meant to simplify things. Like a man
setting out with his briefcase
who discovers the sidewalks all bordered with irises,
and the sky full of startling erasures
thereafter, he conceives of his life in fragments,
is a gentler husband, no longer plays cards,
and is hurt by the slightest mistake
in matters of politeness.
A second voice enters his ear.
This is unlike me. What is more,
this person with my name seems to disappear
as soon as I stop paying attention, and even
as I return there is some quality that’s
forgotten. How like an epitaph it reads.
This is so unlike me.
The second hand just took my breath away!
And like a tropical blossom, the mind contracts
on the blue branches outside the window.
Streetlights I had forgotten all about.
There are so many constants I hadn’t anticipated.
Turning my head from side to side, the sky
as black as everything, the exquisite
disc-shaped light ascending.
Everything points to an understanding.
But even before the story has begun
the world takes on an aura which is commonplace,
almost repulsive. It’s frightening
the way the words advance without any inkling
of what awaits them, a meadow on fire, red trees.
Which makes me think: this could only be love.
Which makes me think it’s all right the man
turns out that way in the end. That the shadows
on the sill stretch out into the shapes
of letters. That the lawn keeps darkening.
That before long I too am disheartened,
and can’t even complete the sentence
begun with the words,
The ground floor was divided as follows:
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