I am the machine that fashions itself:
the material spun from night air in the rain
woven on my body’s loom, a hundred hands
changing its shape as it works, unceasing
as the bricklayers outside with their mortar,
drawn like water from a deep well, build
their wall higher, ever higher, though some-
times they do rest and fill their skins
with wine squeezed from their hands, traffic
their misery amongst themselves, fold their bodies
together like a standing wave held dancing
by the moon. I dig in the earth to find
my shelter, that small kernel of me untouchable
by the machinations of the wider work:
the mirrorless wanderer trapped in the wilderness.
the material spun from night air in the rain
woven on my body’s loom, a hundred hands
changing its shape as it works, unceasing
as the bricklayers outside with their mortar,
drawn like water from a deep well, build
their wall higher, ever higher, though some-
times they do rest and fill their skins
with wine squeezed from their hands, traffic
their misery amongst themselves, fold their bodies
together like a standing wave held dancing
by the moon. I dig in the earth to find
my shelter, that small kernel of me untouchable
by the machinations of the wider work:
the mirrorless wanderer trapped in the wilderness.