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THE DOOR
When my head touches the pillow, the
voices start.
They are outside the door, so I can't tell how many there are.
They keep saying how much they will do; they will help me get out.
One says she will dissolve herself
And come under the door like a gas,
Another will melt herself down like a wax,
Take a cast of the key to slide under the door,
Or throw herself like a stone through a sharp pane of glass,
Though this may mean slashing her wrists.
I wake up and tell them in whisper or hiss
I like the room just as it is, with its four walls
Like four book jackets, holding their stories in.
Before, the mirrors were up, leaning in, smudged
By the fingers and thumbs, noses and lips,
Holes in strong wood, thick as prints on a drinking glass
Too many people had kissed, and when the wind came up,
The curtain would grope through the room
Like a dangerous hand.
Now the mirrors are gone, and the window is shut.
The voices are at it again, having their say.
I tell them, I was told to stay here, and I will.
I remind them how all the rivers drip into the seas
And flow through the mouths of the sharks,
How the topmost boughs always crack under my weight,
How someone has always sawed through one of the rungs,
And how the beaks of the buzzards wait in the peaks
Of the day for the sped vessels lighter than air.
Then they shut up. But soon they come back with their props,
The circus balloon, the white rabbit pulled like a cloud
From the sky's flat blue hat, the shroud to go over
The magician's girl who then will grow whole
(She won't get up, but sleeps like a dress in a trunk)
And Christ dancing in the suit of the lumbering bear.
Now they are singing of the world and its pearls;
They are offering me one, like a sweet or a drug.
I am in the cradle, and I am going to stay.
They are gnashing their teeth;
They are telling me terrible tales
Of the cardboard beasts circling my bed, and the sun,
Hung in the sky like a toy, more than just warm.
They are warning me of the walls, and how they move in.
They are crowded and cramped; their paper dresses are torn.
They lust for the halls of the carpeted skull.
They are starved to be born. |
