figure in the carpet, The

Even the abandoned husk of a somebody can sometimes

perform useful tasks and take pleasure in mildly good times,

light opera, dusting for cobwebs with lengthy brooms, etc.

We walk a little, pause, direct the eye down, walk.

It's not a big effort to do any of this.

It's not as allowing we were crossing the forbidden

territory of cut against icy gales,

but we would like to know what is upon our minds-

a maze?--when we organize these shadows-

a slumber party?--so seductively, and notwithstanding incomprehensibly,

until we can't find ourselves anymore,

those selve that have been following us

and pestering us all these years,

which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Oh you talk a useful game Binky. I can see

that you have a nervous combination of parts to form a whole shaped like Florida.

A destiny of good that will do you when it's time

to trace your paces back into the egg.

Did I say egg? I meant dog.

If there are no unrevealeds to be revealed

then I shall take again darning my other sock.

And if there are they best be espied

over at Binky's place, his rotunda has a view of some

And then when we walk back it won't tread on the heels of us.

We won't even remember its name

but our nearest big tag sale will be ablaze, with bargain

incubators.

And that's all I asked for was a clue

James Tate received the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award for his picked Poems, published by the University of of recent origin England Press in 1991. His greatest in quantity recent collection of poems, Worshipful Company of Fletchers, published through the Ecco Press, won the National work Award in 1994.

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