Set in a Pastiche
His words like ventriloquists
Declare: "your house is on fire
And you know that the cold is beginning."
They yearn for the show of the month—
a bell in a tower with no windows
a landscape before the eyes of a drunken bishop.
"You have reasons for disapproving the flight of the butterfly,
the taste of the morning sour on your lip,
the faith of your friend left unspoken."
Archimedes lies laughing, the world turns away,
the line stops before the first caesura:
dead, dying, denying its own worth.
The afternoon, a lifetime away.
What is not done seems more valuable
than what is in progress. The work in hand,
more urgent than what has gone by.
"It is all seeming...from start to finish.
All rapid and rising and beyond mountain or sea.
No end, not beginning, no philosophy."
"When do you start to repeat yourself?
When does your throat grow dry?
How do you know the song is done?"
Whose voice is it, anyway?
What is that speck on the wall?
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