I was stacking logs, the chore foxing away
another hour of my life. The sun was cold
and fluorescent, its quilt of life hard on
my brain, but tonight it would snow upon
my black pond, and my choices were
limited. Other cold water holes came to
mind—billabongs of my youth—but all
this thinking has left me undernourished:
Lethe, darling—let me drink of you, let
me wash in your riverly forgetfulness
so that I might live again without such
knowledge. This myth warmed me as
I worked, thirsty and lonely. Classical
tunes and stories awaited me indoors,
and I hurried to finish, feeling sad, so
sad. All this cultural sediment, decades
of joy and waste, but you can’t put your
arms around an idea. What is it that I
have done? Books get remaindered. All
these logs I chop will burn. Still, I continue
to strive to thicken my knowledge.
My wrists ache. I am too old for
this. Time is a surprising thing, it
ages me and rubs away at my
benevolent sharpness and blunts me
into recalcitrance, like a living
paradigm of the west. I will die
unsynthesised, the cocaine of me
spent in jumbled imaginings. Meanwhile,
suits loot the world while I dream of other
skies, and more certain times.
All these logs will burn, I said.
