The intervals were hard to tolerate,
reality caught up.
Provided you were working, things that needed
done swept you along, perspiring, happy:
I don’t exist, I work.
All of a sudden, deafening silence,
no let-up of tension
in the cramped office. Just like a grounded
tightrope walker, everything so solid
it hurts. I’d need to sway
or else, to be immured in concrete, half
of a perfect couple whose afternoons
reek of cheese, enmeshed in relatives.
But as for me, I’m free!
Knowledge piles up without there being any
hope of ever reading your way through it:
your desk accuses you.
Time for a cup of tea, but the hotplate
gives no flicker of heat, maybe the cable
I came upon in a corner is faulty,
the one from pre-war days.
A half-hour break so long it drives you crazy,
just like a loaded gun.
Another one lies waiting far away,
unbending, prostrate. Cleverness’s toll.
Better to bite one’s nails. And learn lots more.
Lessons are sugar sweet.