ignoring

green shagplaster wall

and undulant linoleum

ignoring the dirt in all the corners,

against all the molding

he sits, to remember and forget.

the world would not fall upon him, the syllables of

outward sound, people passing dogs cars and sheer rumble

extending ultimately to madness would

cease.

resultant

of an idle fumble, beneath the bed, a vial,

perfume, he savours cautiously against nostrilac.

dilating

his brain to other people's closets

maiden aunts and heaps of strange cool coats

on a too high bed;

ancestral beings struggling with bras.

and longly forely faded intimation

from sheets again descending

to coarse cloth.

would the mind be still, the sight deny: possible

a resolution of lost problems, he would

see sky, only, relieved a hanging of malignant building.

consciousness grows like a tumor, there is no going back and setting

things in order.