Last Call

Only those who are truly naked

can enter the Kingdom of

Feeling.

-Edward Dahlberg

You feed the sheep each morning.

At night you count them.

You sit by the window

in your borrowed clothes

Quietly drinking

as the white statues rise against the sky.

How will it end?

This hole to nowhere?

0, you are calm & collected

as a fist

& clever, clever

in your shrewd repose.

You know Hell inside out.

The room with no locks & a door

& the wee little key

shining shining in your pocket.

Opening the blacked-out daybook

you write

With the Roman calm

of a man dotting i's in a suicide note,

"We're all mates on a westward ship.

We have not yet drunk to the darkest dawn"

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Jul/Aug 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved