Standing for Something
I was in a railway station
And found I wanted to become
Something else
A mythological bush
Or tree perhaps
There in the Milanese crowd
Clutching my slippery suitcase
A man among thousands
One with an ache at the base of his skull
I saw I needed to become Daphne
Ovidian Daphne—formerly
A thing of flesh
And then a flowering thing
“Bring on the metamorphosis,” I thought
“Gods, help me for once!”
An old woman saw I was talking to myself
And she gave me the stink eye
I smiled as if she was a beloved relative
They hate that, the stink eye people
She scurried off bobbing her head like a magpie
“Oh bring on the disambiguation! Come on, Apollo!”
Standing in that middling
And aggressive throng
I knew it would be better
To be a laurel tree:
A laurel with a soul inside it
“Let us,” I said, “become vaguely Rabbincal
About the matter rather than Greco-Roman.”
“My small metempsychosis
My wee soul wandering
Should be reversible like a good garment.”
The Rabbins called this “ibbur”—
The belief that a soul can occupy a body
Temporarily, without passing through life and death
“Alright,” I said. “Right here in this train station
I am a laurel with a soul inside it.”
And though no one noticed
I felt better. Much better
Planet of the Blind 