Having lately taken up residence
In a suite of chambers
Windless, compact and sunny, ideal
Lodging for the pituitary gland of Euclid
If not for a “single gentleman (references),”
You have grown used to the playful inconveniences,
The floors that slide from under you helter-skelter,
Invisible walls put up in mid-
Stride, leaving you warped for the rest of the day,
A spoon in water; also that pounce
Of wild color from corner to page,
Straightway consuming the latter
Down to your very signature,
After which there is nothing to do but retire,
Licking the burn, into—into—
Look: (Heretofore
One could have said where one was looking,
In or out. But now it almost—) Look:
You dreamed of this:
To fuse in borrowed fires, to drown
In depths that were not there.  You meant
To rest your bones in a maroon plush box,
Doze the old vaudeville out, of mind and object,
Little foreseeing their effect on you,
Those dagger-eyed insatiate performers
Who from the first false insight
To the most recent betrayal of outlook,
Crystal, hypnotic atom,
Have held you rapt, the proof, the child
Wanted by neither.  Now and then
It is given to see clearly.  There
Is what remains of you, a body
Unshaven, flung on the sofa.  Stains of egg
Harden about the mouth, smoke still
Rises between fingers or from nostrils.
The eyes deflect the stars through years of vacancy.
Your agitation at such moments
Is all too human.  You and the stars
Seem both endangered, each
At the other’s utter mercy.  Yet the gem
Revolves in space, the vision shuttles off.
A toneless waltz glints through the pea-sized funhouse.
The day is breaking someone else’s heart.

-James Merrill