Anticipating pleasure
-- counting, banking, trading, surviving
on what's to come --
sets our breed apart, they say,
from brutes for whom all's ever
now or never.
But there's a diabolic downside
to this being
forever ahead of the game:
My enemy's enemy
is my friend.
Just so, despite ourselves,
to spite ourselves,
we fast-forward
to the sequel's sequel
and know then that there's no
pleasure in't,
just pain,
an incommensurable currency,
as both now and then
pick up speed
and the whole pre-emptive pyramid
forecloses on itself.
Why do I diminish
your pure essence,
dearer to me
than anything there is or was,
into poor verse?
for shelter or for show?
Again for me, and not for you.
Prose falls shorter still
and who's its addressee?
Deeds, vain too.
Now you are no more
no more are they for you
than if, when you still were,
done adiabatically
so you would never know.
What is not imposture, then?
If words can't in good faith
embody what I feel
is feeling itself
any more true?
Or just another go
for shelter or for show?
Vuelve, o, vuelve!
