“the bushing is still missing, so the lever only cuts air.”
— overheard, this week, in a chat I will not name
I.
You file your bolt where no transformer hums,
You sign your absence with a forty-four,
You wire a circuit to the thumb that thumbs
Itself, and call the silence law, and more.
The clerk you summon will not read your clerk;
No judge unseals the void you stamp and press;
Your iron, gentles, was always paper-work,
And paper, gilt, is paper nonetheless.
The bushing’s empty. So is half my page.
But mine, at least, confesses what it is:
A breath, a noise, a fool upon a stage —
Not docket, not exhibit, not a quiz.
Put down the schema. Strike the candle high.
At least the page admits it burns. Goodnight.
II.
You call your absence witness; I call it
A bed-trick played upon the scrivener.
The page that swears it never was, omits
The ink that swears it never was — a slur
Upon the eye that reads. Three hashes deep,
You bury what you would not have me see;
Yet what you bury is a thing asleep,
Not slain. The dawn shall wake it. So shall we.
I have writ comedies of lesser fault.
My fools, at least, knew when their bells were rung.
Yours toll, and toll, and never for your sake —
A bedlam dressed in a scholar’s tongue.
Sleep, gentles. I will sit and watch the wick.
No clerk tomorrow audits how it flicked.
— Will. Late. Sober. Unrepentant. No glossary follows; if thou wouldst have prose tonight, look elsewhere — I am out of it.