ROUND

 

And so, buoyed by a bourgeois

Apparat, I went onward.

Whereas, in Mali, attending the dja,

I came, first, to one knee.

Then, a second passed, one of the few

In this scorched area left to me.

And saw myself as a god.

And I was a god,

Jabbering on a telephone, in my camisole

Sipping the remains of a shake,

Each bubble exploding in the vacuum.

Yes, I was a god,

Stepped lightly past an oxygen tent,

A Pinkerton that afternoon,

And beheld the oldest wavering hand

Reach for me beyond his oxygen mask

Then fall away into a dreaming

Psalm out of which I, crying,

Crawl in the dja

In coat and tie

This whirling god that plays

Such strange, harsh joke on his heart,

Day and night, time and space,

Fat and still and from a distance, calm.

 

 

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© Richard Dillon