POETIC
IMPORT
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.”