On the kitchen floor, a chrome pail
left idle for the moment
stands in a flare of sunlight,
surrounded by reflection:
a white pool on the polished floor.
left idle for the moment
stands in a flare of sunlight,
surrounded by reflection:
a white pool on the polished floor.
an imposition of a narrative line
upon disparate images, she said,
and like a good obedient boy
I chanted and believed, chanted and believed,
but I am quite suddenly old and
(not as suddenly) wicked, and now
I don't believe it. No. It's the story
that's real, it's always been the story,
the story makes the images, not the other way around.
As if I could make such things! Old and wicked
as I am: I'm not so impious as that.
And so much time given to those
old gilt cruel gods; so much time given
trying to sew a rag doll of myself. When
I could have followed a single splash
spilled from the jar of the sun; a moment's
careless radiance; a story of its own.
1 comment:
The quotation is from Joan Didion's White Album: "We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ideas with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."
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