here, I
think.
Each morning a fog rolls in from the sea. It would lift,
perhaps,
if
you were to come and speak to it. Will you? Do! One
catches the ferry at...."
The pen reels from your hand. Were you asleep?
Who were you writing to? Annette? Me? Jake?
Later, smoothing the foothills of the sheet,
You take up your worn pack.
Above their gay crusaders' dress
The monarchs' mouths are pinched and bleak.
Staggering forth in ranks of less and less
Related cards, condemned to the mystique
Of a redeeming One,
An Ace to lead them home, sword, stave, and axe,
Power, Riches, Love, a place to lay them down
In dreamless heaps, the reds, the blacks,
Old Adams and gray Eves
Escort you still. Perhaps this time ... ?
A Queen
in
the discarded suit of Leaves,
Earth dims and flattens as you climb
And heaven, darkened, steams
Upon the trembling disk of tea.
Sixty or seventy more games
And you can go the rest alone maybe-
Arriving then at something not unlike
Meaning relieved of sense,
Planting a flag there on that needle peak
Whose diamond grates in the revolving silence.
James Merrill
