All my life I have been bothered by them,
these glacial enactments and thickened plots,
these head dense molassical happenings
all plodding exposition or instant, endless crisis.
In my daughter’s dreams whole civilisations fall,
entire oeuvres jet from the pens of poets
as they pass across her patient dream screen,
from their mothers’ breasts to the corner
of Westminster Abbey in an eye’s rapid blink.
Here comes the sun announcing not what’s next
but never is. I want to say, O Mother, why
that bloody knife in your hands? Or you, naked
stranger, what were you about to do? This morning
my daughter announces that my granddaughter,
who does not yet exist, was last night elected president
of a country where only women ride horses,
and this after the war between the last two
believers in God—when she stops and asks me
what of my dreams? what worlds have I seen?
what miracles and vast historical tableaux?
And as always I sigh, and dredge it forth,
some paltry, not even anecdotal sliver:
the way paper waves gusher off west and east
from the archetypal mouth of a scissors;
the tome of unclench, the very continental drift
of a single kiss beginning to end;
my own utterly familiar hands approaching me,
coming straight at my face and filled
with water that no matter how long held
never completely spills. My thirst.