I stayed up until almost two last night writing a long post about the death of my grandmother, family, God, child abuse, and sex, but then I thought it may have been a little bit much for my only post in August, and that perhaps I should tone it down and say something cleaner.
And I will, but later. Some mercy was remembering this perfect poem that I know I say to myself at this time every year, and have probably posted here a few times, just before what happens to me every November since the November to end all Novembers, and I am swallowed up in my grief and depression. My old friend Being Pharaoh by Beckian Fritz Goldberg, which is my everything right now.
(...)
It is August. One woman is so long
longing does not come out of her.
But this time I have loved you
so long I become
the boy you were. I must still
be alive, for everything is changing and
incomplete. Half a tree, half
drives its shadowy web near the shutters.
August has just turned September. The ancestors
want 4,000-year-old grain, hard as quartz,
in grain jars. All I have are cigarettes.
What a night this is. What a night.
I'll lie down and my pillow
will thrum
like a machine. I'll go barefoot
to the window, see if any light is
still on in any house. Who else
is afraid of missing something. Who else
knows one thing God can't enter
is my memory: I, a minor
twentieth-century poet, the first
of September, 4 A.M., finish one thing.
