canto 36
we had conversation
where our boxes
gave us every other
word or several
other words redacted
so that what might
have been:
When the sun rises
when the sun rises
the night turns tail
and the bushes
and the corners
of the buildings
and the silver fenders
of the automobiles
emerge and the men
and women and children
appear to me as people
I once knew
but no longer knew
and the children
are men and women
and the children
I knew as children
have children
of their own.
became:
When the sun rises
when the sun rises
the night turns tail
and the bushes
and the corners
of the buildings
and the silver fenders
of the automobiles
emerge and the men
and women and children
appear to me as people
I once knew
but no longer knew
and the children
are men and women
and the children
I knew as children
have children
of their own.
and what might
have been:
I’m back home
now, as the border
was a mess
and the guards
turned suspicious
of me on both sides
and the Dominionist
lost his way
one day
and it is told
lost his ears
to gun fire
on his travels
for preachings.
And Lucy comes
and goes
and my mother is
as my mother is
and my father is
as my father is
but called
and asked that Lucy
return the things
she’d taken,
the very day I returned
I found her coming and going
and weeping
because he’d called
and not quite in an accusatory
rage but she claimed
as a tempest behind
his teeth, saw blades
grinding into his tongue,
accused her of absconding
with mere bibles
but that they were his
just the same
and that one day he woke
to a world full of thieves,
and he said it had all been
my fault bringing these thieves
into his home
and he suffering the indignity
of coma because of me,
Lucy telling me
my father telling her
my fault it was, all of it,
from the start,
and where were his things:
his books,
his tables,
his tools,
his pingpong table,
his oldfashioned lamps,
all gone, stolen,
and what will I read with
and what will I I read on
and whose fool idea was it
to give all his stuff away
for a legend, for a myth,
for the greatest quakery
of the ages
became to Imelda,
so far away, on these phone lines
not quite so trustable:
I’m back home
now, as the border
was a mess
and the guards
turned suspicious
of me on both sides
and the Dominionist
lost his way
one day
and it is told
lost his ears
to gun fire
on his travels
for preachings.
And Lucy comes
and goes
and my mother is
as my mother is
and my father is
as my father is
but called
and asked that Lucy
return the things
she’d taken,
the very day I returned
I found her coming and going
and weeping
because he’d called
and not quite in an accusatory
rage but she claimed
as a tempest behind
his teeth, saw blades
grinding into his tongue,
accused her of absconding
with mere bibles
but that they were his
just the same
and that one day he woke
to a world full of thieves,
and he said it had all been
my fault bringing these thieves
into his home
and he suffering the indignity
of coma because of me,
Lucy telling me
my father telling her
my fault it was, all of it,
from the start,
and where were his things:
his books,
his tables,
his tools,
his pingpong table,
his oldfashioned lamps,
all gone, stolen,
and what will I read with
and what will I I read on
and whose fool idea was it
to give all his stuff away
for a legend, for a myth,
for the greatest quakery
of the ages
