Towards a Relative Ending / Wyatt Prunty

Uninterrupted days occasion us,
Affording light, withdrawing light,
Almost as if someone too far away,
Had thought but then forgotten why he thought
Or, intuitive, had acted without cause
And, looking again, wondered what it was he meant.

Self-thinking and forgetful at one time,
We live in rooms we know too well
Until that ocular day,
Vivid for the sky’s emptiness:
The desk no more a desk,
Bookshelves only a sequence after myth,
Each object odd, beyond the schemes
Of numbered space and alphabet;

Or else a room kept closed too long,
A safe appointed place
Imagined as the portal to some end
With light obscured by canopies of dust,
An iridescent dust in winter light
That suddenly draws dark along the floor,
Clouds passing miles overhead.

—included in Unarmed and Dangerous, p. 176

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