Dispatch from Behind the Mountain
Then there’s this: a page
torn from the original
stupor to which the mind
is always driven to
return, drawn by a calling
back to the memory
of what must have been a room
you abandoned
impulsively, caught up
in the fluster of a vast
misunderstanding, or else
a room you never left
without the sense you were leaving
something of value
puzzled in the billows
pulsing underwater…
and even as you turn
to retrieve what’s lost
you know you never
will except in pieces, random
glimpses of a nothing
you want only to possess
again entirely, entirely
without sacrifice, as if
to sift living long enough
among dim lamps
might press into your hands
the sum of all the pages
missing or else leave you
briefly able to compose
an apparatus which might
force the infinite
back into the cabin of your thought now and stop
the animals where they drink
along the perimeter
of the lake beneath your sleep.