1.
You can’t rule the half light: not like you can at mid-day, the “mezzo-giorno”, that false impression of sunlight that says you will live forever and the baby will stay a baby and first love will always stay in your sleeves. Half light is merciless. There is a spiritual blue about the veins in the old man’s face and he’s your father and then he’s you and god almighty then he’s your child and the mirror remains standing as a museum piece at the Hermitage.
2.
In a winter dream I start my life, then forward it, hurrying the mathematical rivers and trees…Venetian masks rise and fall, friends from childhood…Two girls…their hair in braids…Finland, Midsummer…a boat…a boy with leukemia…Gray this. Blue that. A thousand suns…I whisper in house after house… Bread and wine…Old dog trying to stand…Now my own deathbed, a corner room under pines…my children coming near…Sons and daughters of Apollo—each a sharp sail on night’s river…Outside by moonlight crows build nests from the pages of my books…
3.
My father had such restless hands. Even when he was buying a suit and standing before the mirror he would reach out and tap at the glass as though confirming something with his reflection. “Hey, you in the suit,” the gesture said, “stand up more. Slouching like that you look guilty or sad.”
Me? I slouch. Think too much. Pray quietly. Forget the proper words. Walk about. Get lost in the Hermitage. Hell I get lost yes yes.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 