Finding myself folded in a wheelshape
One foot under sheets of green bamboo
Watching you saunter, walking your wood
Heels across cowhide to the open door.
God, god under black gauze, I do believe
In this world, the one that was abandoned &
Plunged into night where hours never seem
To pass, hours do not walk like you on wood
Heels across cowhide past eggy lathplaster
Out into the kitchen that leads somewhere
Not to be mentioned, a door with hung face
Swinging open, looking back at me folded
From out of its painted diamond, as always
I digress for fear of a direct address upon
The world’s night, not for fear of that night,
But for fear of repetition and alienation, for
Who cares to hear about our life bereft of all
Gods, they have absconded and left us here.
It could be worse, yes, I could have not been
Left here myself, folded into the unnameable
Wheelshape conversing with a tutelary face
Bought secondhand and hung on the door
While I wait for your return, sweet clattering
Wood walking across wood and a cowhide
That mutes the sound, at least somewhat,
Before your feet become shed from shod,
You are bare as your birthday, then jump
Or more precisely slide back into our green
Sheets of bamboo, from which I then rise
After unfolding the wheelshape, I disappear,
Cowhide, plaster, open-mouthed icon, all
Unnameable rooms, ineffable appearances,
Blah blah blah, you know what’s important
Is the wheelshape, and I do go back there
At a later point which may or may not occur
Before your eyes, you, not you, but you, yes,
You, are you folded in some different shape,
An angle diagram, the shape of two wings,
Owlhead looking backward, just watching
A halted procession. Impossible to guess
How long it has been halted, we arrived
When it was fullstopped already, and still
Nothing has occurred to elicit a question
As to whether or not that remains the case.
In a situation like that, you lose all sense of
Time’s passage, so the momentary appears
Eternal, endless, it becomes naturalized,
Men come down ill with nostalgias & pine
For cozy wars of prior centuries, dusty idols
Looking at us mockingly from a “holy” dais,
Heads in gilt halo while some are scraping
Coronae off the walls in their desperation
Scanning foil with their fingers to determine
Value under red light. They know not what is
Bound to happen, yes, O, the wheel’s turn
Is not consigned to impossibility! It’s going
To turn, it is already, imperceptibly, I believe
That turning can be felt if you can be still,
But is it even worth it? We have no idea
What is the current hour, we cannot see
The changes in the shade of stolid pitch,
It is perhaps beyond our meager senses.
It is night, it is dark, it may yet be darker,
It may be those hours that follow midnight,
It turns slowly now, we may not live to see
Light cast on the abyssal ground, showing it
Bare to us, we stand in the clear-concealed.
It will be shown to the future ones, I know it.
For now, make easy way in the strange night.
Fold yourself in a wheelshape, listen to doors
Move on old hinges, to wood walking cross
Cowhides to the whorled bed, and slowly
Lathplaster turns to dust around us, broken
By the force of repeating love, a little wheel
Concentric with the greatest moving slowly.
Sam Robinson runs the blog Look at the Sun Directly and is the author of Man with Head Removed.