Now
i
It is this way with me now:
I shall put up my hair –
The pins in my mouth –
In haste in another’s house;
My fingers become my eyes
for every texture must be memorized.
There is no need the darkness recognizes.
ii
The shallow trinkets laid away,
All assaying the silver and the gold
Is ended; the little cupels, stained and porous
we bought at auction
And drank wine from are wrapped in tissue.
iii
How long we lingered there!
When everyone we had ever loved had gone
We stayed to honor Halloween
And wasted in the jack-o-lantern’s
moist and dark-webbed mouth
How many guttering votive candles!
ivIt is pleasant to drink one’s tea
In a dry and empty place –
To be relieved of the authority of pain;
Still, I must find a tool
To undermine the ban around
the space of sleep
When dreams, like stern wardens,
Warn me of sentences to come –
Where in the line-ups fickle felons turn away,
their lost identities never proved.
v
Confess that you have seen beyond
the frosted glass
An image you once loved.