Custom reckons room walls at four
Until mine. But – a glitch? Coincidence?
I remember three walls for sure.
Of the fourth I’m not convinced.

Who can know with her back to the spot?
It may be, but it, too, may not

Be. And wasn’t. Windy. So,
What’s in back if not a wall? All that's
Not desired. Dispatch from Dno,
‘Abdicated.’ Not only mail brings

Headlines. Urgently wires fly
From all over and all the time.

Were you playing piano? A draft.
Windy. Shirt-sail fluttering. Cotton
Fingers. Sonatina aloft.
(You’re just eight, or have you forgotten?)

For that wall no one’s seen or tracked
I know the name: wall of a back

At the piano. Or else at a
Writing desk, or perhaps a mirror for

Shaving (for it – had a way –
That wall – of becoming a corridor in

The mirror. It portered in – you stared:
Emptiness’ portable chair).

Chair for all who cannot come in
Door-wise, – doorways sense soles keenly!
That’s the wall where you, from within,
Sprouted, – my haste with the past's unseemly –

There is a whole paragraph still
Between us. Like Danzas, from behind you will

Sprout.
     For like Danzas – it’s called,
Chosen, wanted, on time, expressly,
(I know its name: the spine enwalled!)
Entering the room – not D’Anthèsly.

He turns his head. Danzas: “All set?”
Thus in ten stanzas, lines, you’ll step

In.
     An eye attack in the rear.
But, to leave the “in-back” category,
Surely a ceiling did appear.
Not to be stubborn: parlor-like, sort of,

Possibly, and it slightly droops.
(Bayonet attack in the troops’

Rear.)
     The cerebellum feels a
Squeeze. And lump-like the spine goes flaccid.
That wall of CHEKA inviolate,
Wall – of day-breaks, well, wall – of lucid

Shootings: finer-etched than body signs’
Shadow, – from behind in the spine.

Shootings: what I cannot forgive.
But, to leave the walled-in category,
The ceiling was, I’m positive,
Whole (why we needed it – that story

Later.) To the fourth wall I return:
Wall to which, retreating, a turn-

Coat stumbles back.
            ‘Well, was there a
Floor? On something, well, one has to?....’
Yes. – Not for all. Swing- or trunk-high, aloft, at a
Horse’s height, hawser’s height, or the Sabbath’s, –

Higher!.. Up there we know that we
Must join heels that are used to gravity

With the emptiness.
            A floor’s for feet.
– How rooted a man is, how en-potted! –
A ceiling’s for sealing up leaks.
The ancient torture, remember? – A drop an
Hour. So grass wouldn’t grow inside –
A floor, so earth wouldn’t go inside –

With all – with those – for whom a pole
On a May night’s still nothing to fear!
Three walls, a ceiling, and a floor.
That’s everything, no? Now – appear!

So will the shutters signal me?
It’s sketched in a rush, this room you see,
Off-whitely penciled palidly –
In a rough draft, disheveledly.

No roofer was here, no plasterer –
Just a dream. On wireless pathways a
Guard. Under a lidded cavity
He-finds-a-she discovery.

No vender was here, no upholsterer –
Just a dream, it’s barer than Baltic Sea
Sandbars. The floor lacks lusterness.
A room? Put plainly, just planenesses.

A landing dock is more welcoming!
Something out of geometry,
Gaps in a pasteboard volumette,
Fully grasped, but tardily.

And where’s Phaeton’s brake, the
Desk? It’s the elbow nurtures a
Desk. Feed the elbowing proclivity,
There’ll be a desk for “desk-activity.”

Just as the storks bring little ones:
There’ll be a need – and enter the
Thing. In advance, no fidgeting!
With the guest the chair originates.

All things will be,
Don’t plan, don’t build.
What signals the –
Say – domicile?

Remote terrain
Of give-and-take,
The inn is named
Souls’ Meeting-place.

Meeting of souls. All others mean parting,
Even the warmer-than-warmest sort!
Do hands provide the carting?
No, something softer,

Lighter, and purer than
Hands. A rebuilt bungalow
With services? No, that’s more a bore than
What we cast off below!

Yes, here we’re touchy mortals,
And rightly. Hands’ auguries,
Hands’ motives, hands’ totals,
Hands’ extremities…

I, without nervous where-are-you’s,
Wait. Quiet as a mouse.
Mere gestures are the service crews
In Psyche’s royal house.

Wind alone is dear to a poet.
Corridors – the one thing I’m sure of.

Basis of armies – of passings through.
Walk a long time is what a poet must do

Suddenly to hit mid-room and seem
A lyre-bearing god…
           Path of poetry!

Topping our brows, like a banner gliding
Is the wind, wind raised by our striding!

For and so forth’s usual framing –
Corridors: the distance’s taming.

Distance sporting the rook-like face of a
Foreign nanny plods at the pace of

Children’s feet, in a yellow slicker
Rhyming kids’ words: ruler – slipper –

Sticker…in a dress train a trifle
Pea cocky, a tower somewhere, called Eiffel.

Since for a child a pebble’s a river,
Smitch of distance, a distance-sliver

In a child’s limited memory cranny,
Distance with hand baggage – a nanny

Who didn’t tell us (distance was modish)
What in the luggage we were toting…

Pencil-box size the distance espouses,
Corridors: the canals of houses.

Fates, events, terms, nuptial carouses, –
Corridors: the inflows of houses.

Corridor-like, at five in the morning
Not just brooms, but nameless informing

Sweeps. They reek of caraway and turf.
Your occupation? Cor-ri-dor work.

Merely demanding the French Revolution’s
Corridors-wise threshing solutions!

Whoever corridors constructed
(Dug), had logistic smarts,
To give blood time to be conducted
Round the angle of the heart’s

Corner – that one, the sharp
Corner – lure for thunder bolts!
So that the island of the heart
Senses from all sides the jolts

Of blood. This corridor’s creation
Is – can’t be more clear – mine –
To give the brain time for relating
Messages the whole line

Long: from the last call, ‘End of
Boarding’ to the heart’s main
Junction: “Train’s coming! To end it –
Shut your eyes and jump! To not – away

From the rails.” This corridor’s made by
Me, not a poet, from life!
So there’s time for the brain to
Denominate the site,

Since a meeting is a space, an
Inventory – sketch – a count –
Of words, sometimes out-of-place, and
Of gestures, plainly unsound.

So love is creaseless –
Wholly, so I can wow
You, to the final creasing –
Of lips? Of my dress? My brow.

Any woman could straighten her dresses!
Corridors: the tunnels of houses.

Just like the old man, led by his daughter,
Corridors: the fissures of houses.

Friend, behold! By letter, or dreaming –
As the light, I come at you streaming!

When your eyes close in sleep initially, –
As a light ray I, pre-monitionally

Come at you. The last light point you descry
Will be I – a luminescent eye.

Then, what’s next?
The dream’s text.
An ascent,
Then a bent,

Brow’s – to brow.
Yours – juts out,
Crude rhyme now:
Your lips pout.

Possibly since the walls were kissed
Off – surely the ceiling list-

ed. Mouths in vocatives galore
Bloomed. And the floor – a gap, for sure.

And through the gap, like the Nile green…
Surely the ceiling did careen.

But, the floor – what, except ‘Drop dead!’
Can one say to it? Do we need un-swept

Floors? Look up! I’ve had it with trash!
The whole poet clings to a dash

Utterly…
     Over two bodies’ blank
Space, surely the ceiling sang –
Angels-in-choir-ly.