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From A Dialogue Of Deep Wills

 

 “Make no mistake. Everything in the mind is in rat’s country. It doesn’t die…Nothing perishes, it 

 is merely lost till a surgeon’s electrode starts the music of an old piano player whose scrolls are

 dust.” —Loren Eiseley, All the Strange Hours

 

Your quietude, as a mirror, varnished

by the oil of this wide, once-gleaming street

dripping from a can with paint job tarnished

by the rubbing hands of the Paraclete.

 

“Paraclete, my heart’s sin I comprehend —

it’s in my mind I command you trespass.

Rats waltz up there. All my waking they send

quivering yarns snaking through uncut grass.”

 

“If my tread were the tread of a Panzer,

and my hands themselves coated in razor,

I’d still decline a line in that stanza.

Better to collar Mary and praise her…

 

In too many head’s rooms I’ve peeked to see

a rat peek back and, laughing, mirror me.”

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