What makes you think I’m an eccentric, he said, in London
To the rag of the reporters who had gathered to report
On his eccentricities — the tin sink light enough for traveling, but
Deep enough to swallow his exquisite hands in water filled with ice.
A budgerigar accompanies, perched atop the fugue of Hindemith.
You are trembling now like the librarian reading
To herself out loud in her Arctic room
Composed entirely of snow.
A broadcast (high fidelity) bound by the quiet of the land and
The Mennonite who told him
We are in this world, but are not of this world,
You see. From the notebook of your partial list of symptoms, phobias:
Fever, paranoia, polio (subclinical), ankle-foot phenomenon,
The possibility of bluish spots. Everything one does is fear
Not being of this world or in this world enough.
There is no world I know, without some word of it.
