Chamberglass

three poems

They tell you, We can't tell you

what your child will be ever like

and they are telling you the truth.

No one, not you, even knows

if there will be such a child.

It's like an opera in which, slowly,

every person born in the red square

on the bingo card of your birth

is drifting away to death-land,

discarding their white silk scarves and fancy dress

to jumble into a heartland of flat, poor sleeping.

You lie awake in the summer night and think about the truth

as you know it, the truth they tell you,

how its sound rises with the heat that keeps you waking.

Some have learned to gamble

and you do not love them anymore,

except a little. They were always good at games.

Some are drinking and lying

about it. They cover each number. You have wishes

that are otherwise, an aside

you sing to the audience buried like good friends

in your chamberglass pit,

the body as empty as after the orchestra

has removed its black clothes.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 2003
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