A smart man
is alone in a humid room with wallpaper and a thick maroon carpet:
the walls are ordered ledges of literature, growing and revising daily—
some antique, others wetly inked and new from a spectral press.
The books tell him whatever he needs to know—all else, he can guess.
He thinks,
I’ll spend the first day taking it all in, I’ll make a schedule
to ensure that no hour goes uncounted.
Inventory: a typewriter and endless paper atop a stone pedestal;
in that corner, a closet cupboard, a body-warm swimming pool.
In arching longhand, to nobody in particular, he writes missives
for a sense of romance. If he thinks of something he needs, there it is.
At the level of hobby,
his letters disappear overnight, as though they were never written.
Still, he writes to pass the time.
See wide windows over pastures and remember.
Time has left the orbit of thought. He is only
the brightest, strongest, newest, spiciest can be—
the life of the parade, the scent of all tea.
This is the beginning of pressureless living.
His skin is white as cards, his hair confused, but no one
is there to gossip about it.
In his third year of quarantine, his fruits and pleasures retreat
into the mustard-hued wallpaper. The television is burnt,
and the pool, a greened-over marsh. Wet weather breaks
through the leaking roof, cruel rain forms little lakes,
tatters the parchments,
and warps and petrifies all of the other books;
his writing alone is haphazardly spared.
This hirsute man
thinks: I was never bored, or plain,
nor can I discern any single halfday spin
of the sun and moon; their unpreservation
is the rest of my life, and the end of emotion.
He has lost his unready tongue,
more adept now to speak in Eden
and roam over the applelife.