Reading James Merrill at Bedtime
Among the fakers, this poem, “Mirror,”
seems no faker; more like myrrh
attempting not to shine
inside another day’s meconium.
To see its epidermis
suggesting and enforcing terms,
the fullness thereof, crawling with spiders
and a great deal of intentionality,
is to admit I don’t know jack.
Today has sickle
cell disease, and time is death’s
pituitary gland and feathers.
But in this poem, I see the naughty sister
of perfection prove a kiss
is always slightly monstrous.
For something sweet as kisses never known,
this poem auditions
thunder’s muted speech in history’s Audi,
one or two standard deviations above Jerusalem
it rides and rustles.
The hour women are getting late breaks
into my house. It’s one heckuva
hypothesis; this poem’s “Come over
to my Overton
window,” as nightmares break
into blossom. Unlike Hecuba,
this poem never seems less ridiculous
than when it speaks
from a place where nothing’s temporary.
Not that slutty city, Life – so far,
its capital is Death – where anger
loves cartoons and grief, not conquering
or conquered, is more like love’s
protagonist. Commercial waterways’ removal
of Of from depth perception’s seams
by day reflects how dreaming
darkens this poem and the door
like my father before me.
From such dissolution, much is solved:
my daughter, my revolver;
agitated distances coming to fruition
in the skies above Astoria: big fish
starring in the summer’s
of summers just war. At first blush, this poem
portrays an ass, expounding
with the always healthy sounds
of independence, don’t it?
Meanwhile, the donut of the mind –
rolling through this poem and uphill
to Philadelphia,
as if to feed whatever marmots
methought I heard in the wind’s revolting rhetoric –
suspects it tastes of truth and method.