3596. IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK?

IS THAT WHAT 

YOU THINK?

I can't read the comatose letters  -  the

ones the man in the iron swing has written.

Some old Irish bard, younger than I but

whatever, has written the words never meant

to be said : wisdom and wit, crackling mirth,

all that junk science of the industry of poets.

I am so tired already, and I've not yet even started.

Let me bring beck the past  -  how's that? All that

whistling, wheedling and wheezing all together,

like old men, post-stroke, playing cards for paper

money and metal. They know little, and pronounce

nothing right. I may have been to that place once before,

I really cannot remember. My eyes are tired of marking.

-

The lady reading Tarot cards, I realize, has my name

mixed up with someone else's  -  all those predictions

of dire fate and happiness, were they meant, in that

order, for me or for another? A separate fellow with

a grander past and a wilder future? Or is that

all my fate to see? I thought I was blind

already, but now it is truly growing dark.