April 2005

When the mind fumbles, reaching feebly
back and back with its long black needles
waving like one too few or far too many
mutely clacking, poison-tipped antennae
at a wavery something in the past
it cannot now grasp,
lurching vaguely along the ocean floor,
flailing, in a...

We could be dead and this
our little limbo. Where breathless,
blind, cramped we find
a table laid with the sterling world
we'd lost. Where looking back

we see what for so long
we half-believed, people do
go on. Go...

"Yes, it's on you," Kalliópe frowns,
Dribbling amber beads of olive oil
Down her fingers into the water glass
Where they amass
In one big cyclops-blob, and do not scatter.

Something, it seems, always is the matter:
Vague pains, or...