When the diggers came, they found burnt pots,
But the shadows had fled.
Instead of songs, a coprolith;
Instead of heaven, scratch marks on a wall,
The relic of bad dreams.
IV
I want to gnaw at my jailer's shadow.
I want to write to my brothers in crime
Whose victims get rich,
While they squat in stale rooms
Rolling snake-eyes with their heart-bones.
I want to sing of claustrophobia,
The iron marriage of a man to his shadow.
Hugging the sprawled 'sheets, the grease,
And the insomnia;
Inspecting the entrails of birds;
Speaking ghost-talk to my wife,
Although my anxiety shines through her
Without casting a shadow;
I will praise the fear of death
Which is the basalt of dark foundations;
I will trace a map for caravans setting out
Tomorrow across the blinding floor.
I will tell my secrets, listening in secret
To find them out.
V
I did not write these words; I scraped them into stone,
Like a prisoner loosening the bars with his bare hands.
My poem is an empty window, and a leap to freedom:
Softly blinking leaves, the horizon
Cupped suddenly under the sky.
It
is a long fall as birds do it,
Shorter this way.
Paul Zweig
