MERCURY A vial of it: dusty, warm From being held so long in my hand; the little cork that fit So well, the cap I would undo In secret, sprawling on the floor Of the basement, after Chekhov Or Kafka, or glancing in horror At the old vermilion volume On Chinese Torture, or savoring The sage-green suede Of the Rubaiyat, before I ever Got to Freud. The same dust Covered the Harvard Classics, Uniform in their jackets, Their leather dry and glossy, While the glass vial beckoned With its mysterious fluid That could bifurcate and scatter, Rolling, puddling, pooling, Some dots escaping Into cracks in the linoleum, But most of them retrieved, Succumbing to each other As I gather them together With the slightest pressure, The liquid growing dimmer Each time it was restored, Its ratio of loss too minor, Too gradual, for father To suspect what I had done. Why was it there, hiding On his desk behind a pipe With the face of Mephistopheles? What experiment forgotten, Abandoned, untried, what badge Of glory or failure did it signify, That small, heavy vial Whose promise was a murky Wave of buoyancy, an innocence Of having, of breaking, Creating without consequence Droplets forsaking The sea whence they came Without a seam, or cry of protest, Or any sound of severance At the source, the minuscule Remainder a reminder of the refusal To be destroyed, the singularity Or every silver bead that briefly Lived apart from the whole Before merging and returning To the vessel I would hold And shake and spill, and finally Refill, in a ritual Of parting, pouring being into Being, pondering its nature In the open field of my hand, My limited supply of a substance Infinite in its divisibility And equally indivisible, An unborn mass of matter Immortal and mute as the sleeping Figure eight (not a number, Really, but the god of numbers) That father drew on paper, Never closed so never ending, Though once he said to me In the morning, just as the light Began to swim through my shade, Do you think I will always be here?-- As if he were unlocking a door between us; and what could I say, Either way it was unspeakable, And how could he know His question altered everything, That the earth began to change As the thought os his being no more Took root, dividing him From me, from the sky I appealed to, Unanswered: O god of alchemy And currency, patron of traders, Travellers, and thieves, inventor Of the lyre, master of dreams, Leader of the Graces, bearer Of the message that tears Odysseus from Circe, Aeneas From Dido, guardian of the departed, Do not quicken my heart with hope Anymore, but if you do remember That I, like the metal you give Your name to, rejoin if pulled asunder. |
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