Duties of Waste Also
Or he attracts the devil he reflects, on all fours
like a pig to feed, and it moves against him
in the singular chord
of its obedience,
or he walks the same tune
as his religion, and the god he calls everywhere
like a dog by whistle
sits down with him. Or he goes into the towns
and is seen by people and is needed for things
people need
from the people they know.
Or he escapes into a world made large
by some eccentricities
he has, and goes into the cities to entertain them
like a vanishing card
in the decks men have when they have nothing.
Or he is tied to an awful face
in a street market, is staked to a market to atone
for the mince of markets,
or he goes to the market to purchase some mud
to make things from mud,
and sees himself
at the stall with a hand deep in some pocketful,
pausing for that pleasure. Or a magic is pulled
from his throat
and he paupers it the same way the same men
will do him
before it ends. Or eagerly, massively, in a chord
of obedience it ends,
the decision made and a judgment held over him
like a blown halo
by the devil he reflects. Or the devil repatriates
his throat with winsome murk
and the only word
others mean to hear, and makes a face from him
to breathe
among faces. If I am not to be beautiful,
then this.
God [Sic]
Never trust a book with maps
was what I once heard,
& too true—but
by then I had already converted
to the religion of history. God
we believed in earnest
wore those clothes the histories
expected him to wear, & in this
was positively historical—
even his hat was fundamental.
He’d brought
a new world to bear
by way of assurance he could do
better than the last one,
which water-logged at ten eons.
This time there would be land
as well as sea, & so the necessity
of cartography. He saw the maps,
& they were good
but not great, but the fairytales
the maps necessitated
(in the margins of course)
captured something illuminating.
Even the goblins’ hats were
fundamental. Never trust a god
who understands your situation,
I was told, & that was true also:
I never found myself any better
at prognostication
just because I knew the story of
my god—
& it seemed, too, as though all
the fairytales ended