Here I come in my suit of insignificance,
hewn to importance. How revolutionary,
these days, for everyone to stop identifying
with the art, and to start treating it as just that—art.
A roar and a mandarin self. Found in this shell’s
swirl, I’m content to say I wear the vita brevis well.
Walk miles through terra cotta death masks;
the diaphanous transmogrifications crossed
over lifetimes are still missing. So it goes for that old
shipping line, the spectacle of the heart. Or the tidal tedium
of thought without feeling. Freud had his beautifully wrought
staircase in his inner vestibule, a peculiar Viennese canard.
It’s wrongly assumed that understanding rests at a lyric angle,
that love can undo bad misunderstandings in one afternoon.
I believe someone will look at me one day,
his eyes empty of everything but tenderness.
I watch winter from the window, every few
years studying the storms, who speak
to each other. Memory is only looking down
into the fragile stairwell of a nautilus.