Mirror by James Merrill @joshuacreboreads

Joshua Crebo | Mirror by James Merrill @joshuacreboreads | Uploaded March 2024 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.

$For Proust by James Merrill Over and over something would remain Unbalanced in the painful sum of things. Past midnight you arose, rang for your things. You had to go into the world again. You stop for breath outside the lit hotel, A thin spoon bitter stimulants will stir. Jean takes your elbow, Jacque your coat. The stir Spreads—you are known to all the personnel— As through packed public rooms you press (impending Palms, chandeliers, orchestras, more palms, The fracas and the fragrance) until your palms Are moist with fear that you will miss the friend Conjured—but she is waiting: a child still At first glance, hung with fringes, on the low Ottoman. In voice reproachful and low She says she understands you have been ill. And you, because your time is running out, Laugh in denial and begin to phrase Your questions. There had been a little phrase She hummed, you could not sleep tonight without Hearing again. Then, of that day she had sworn To come, and did not, was evasive later, Would she not speak the truth two decades later, From loving-kindness learned if not inborn? She treats you to a look you cherished, light, Bold: “Mon ami, how did we get along At all, those years?” But in her hair a long White lock has made its truce with appetite. And presently she rises. Though in pain You let her leave—the loved one always leaves. What of the little phrase? It’s notes, like leaves In the strong tea you have contrived to drain, Strangely intensify what you must do. Back where you came from, up the strait stair, past All understanding, bearing the whole past, Your eyes grown wide and dark, eyes of a Jew, You make for one dim room without contour And station yourself there, beyond the pale Of cough or of gardenia, erect, pale. What happened is becoming literature. Feverish in time, if you suspend the task, An old, old woman shuffling in to draw Curtains, will read a line or two, withdraw. The world have put on a thin gold mask.$

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