When you look at nothing
what are you looking at P
Whose face floats on the water
dissolving like a paper plate?

It’s the first one, remember,
the one you thought you abandoned
along with the furniture.

You returned to her after the other war
and look what happened.
Now you are wondering
whether to do it again.

Meanwhile she sits in her chair
waxing and waning
like an inner tube or a mother,
breathing out, breathing in,

surrounded by bowls, bowls, bowls,
tributes from the suitors
who are having a good time in the kitchen

waiting for her to decide
on the dialogue for this evening
which will be in perfect taste
and will include tea and sex
dispensed graciously both at once.

She’s up to something, she’s weaving
histories, they are never right,
she has to do them over,
she is weaving her version.

the one you will believe in,
the only one you will hear.

Here are the holy birds,
grub white, with solid blood
wobbling on their heads and throats

They eat seeds and dirt, live in a shack,
lay eggs, each bursting
with a yellow sun, divine
as lunch, squeeze out,
there is only one word for it, shit,
which transforms itself to beets
or peonies, if you prefer.

We too eat
and grow fat, you aren’t content
with that, you want more,
you want me to tell you
the future. That’s my job,
one of them, but I advise you
don’t push your luck.

To know the future
there must be a death.
Hand me the axe.

As you can see
the future is a mess,
snarled guts all over the yard
and that snakey orange eye
staring up from the sticky grass
round as a target, stopped
dead, intense as love.

Now it is winter.
By winter I mean: white, silent,
hard, you didn’t expect that,

it isn’t supposed to occur
on this kind of island,
and it never has before

but I am the place where
all desires are fulfilled,
I mean: all desires.

Is it too cold for you?
This is what you requested,
this ice, this crystal

wall, this puzzle. You solve it.

It’s the story that counts. No use telling me this isn’t a story, or not the same story. I know you’ve fulfilled everything you promised, you love me, we sleep till noon and we spend the rest of the day eating, the food is superb, I don’t deny that. But I worry about the future. In the story the boat disappears one day over the horizon, just disappears, and it doesn’t say what happens then. On the island that is. It’s the animals I’m afraid of, they weren’t part of the bargain, in fact you didn’t mention them, they may transform themselves back into men. Am I really immortal, does the sun care, when you leave will you give me back the words? Don’t evade, don’t pretend you won’t leave after all: you leave in the story and the story is ruthless.