#135

Some skyscraper lounge, in the off of time, eight years ago, in situ. Where Stephen sat observing. The stretch of shadows cross the carpet, mottled red. The sun, behind the windows, setting. What, oh what, did Stephen write, confronted by this grandeur? Not a thing did Stephen write that night: not a word, or mark, or figure.

Imagery, and reverie, and Gods and fighting men. Rifkin and Ryan’s Literary Theory. Perloff’s Poet among Painters. Closet, books, a plant or two, chocolate doughnuts on the desk. A coterie of stuffed beasts upon the future poet’s bed. And where, if we could search for it, would we find his writing pen? By the bridge, on the East, the third of Moloch’s hard-edged fingers. On the fourth floor, looking past.

There were, as there are still, thin voices in the white of winter heaters. There were, in men, the bare coherence of bone and muscle. Teachers taut, and minds still hollow. The last frail clutch of fathers, sons. Here we have our hero, not at birth, but prior: one of those bare paths that took him out and back behind the present, and left him, gray-eyed döppleganger to the cause.