Things look peaceful enough? Don't be foolish:
up there's like down here. My room's three chairs?
All comfortable-looking. Not one
you can sit in. Derelicts taking up space
against my walls. No one calls . No one comes
to the door. I've painted No Visitors, meaning
only humans not welcome. I've read we
want to become the big bang, get out
and join the gods. I'm fond of these theories
leaking in under the door. I let
them be, I've confidence
out from under the bright lights. I sit late,
unwatched, watching t. v. That must be
why we put roofs on everything: not being stared at
by the universe, is being forgotten, not dead.
William Matthews
LEIPZIG, 1894
We have only one portrait of Bach - scow, genius, mule
and rock upon which music built her church-
and that portrait has been painted over, and restored,
but to what? Because we'll never know we opened
his grave to find he was of medium build
and that if the body is resurrected it leaves its chorus
of bones behind, polyphonal like the self. Each clammy
sweatbead on my arms grew colder. Did I think
a mud dove would fly up from his broken grave?
And all that dirt would need to be shovelled back.
The lantern flames tossed their heads this way and that.
Behind us - for we all faced in like a random
