I walk about my house as in a public park,
as if by walking I drive in order like stakes
around something falling apart.
I walk as I write, against solitude itself
—something must keep us company—
against silence, against darkness, against the hours
where, in this house, things multiply
in absurd symmetry. With what will I arm myself?
For it appears I live in a ball of illusions—
Everything I see is what I want to see, what I have seen
what I can see, what shouldn’t be seen.
What I can no longer bear to see.
I am in a cave designed by Dali, full of mirrors,
one stunned cat in mid-air, and I am the water pirouetting
from the silver bucket. Because to be the cat is to be
twice exposed. In my search for company, which really
is a search for warmth, I draw the chequered blanket
over me and scrabble for things I have misplaced
and things that have misplaced me.
My father. My God. The tune of old songs.
I want to sing something I remember
from start to finish, but nothing is complete. So
I work with what is close at hand—
a friend’s cat eight streets away, nighttime conversations
with an old love in Canada, Aretha Franklin’s
“I Never Loved a Man,” Sontag`s essays by the bed,
the warm squeezing of my own sorrow
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Poetry - ISSUE #27