That Was Now, This Is Then by Vijay Seshadri

Author:Vijay Seshadri [Seshadri, Vijay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Cliffhanging

for Tom Lux

The forces out to kill us with their benevolence

are more crazed now than they were when you were alive.

And more focused, too. Our ingratitude excites them.

They’re bubbling with remedies.

Their providential impulses are a nimbus of knives.

Their need to tell us they love us, love us,

with all their love in vain …

You said before you died that this would happen.

Thanks for the warning. You didn’t let me know, though,

that even our phantom selves would come after us,

crawling out of the poems we made.

They don’t care about the transparent skin we wrapped them in

so they could watch their organs pulsing within.

All they know is that we made their eyes too bright.

They see more than they can stand,

more than we ever could or would. They see the unending savagery

that we could never really bear to see,

and so we consigned our sight to them.

They hate us for it. They’ve cut the phone lines,

and are chain-sawing the front door.

I’m a little worried about myself because

all this hostility from every quarter bothers me

much less than it should. Why the disconnect? I can’t figure it out.

And it’s long past time to take precautions.

The great wave that breaks through the crust of the world

is rising and rising and lifting me far inland,

only to suck me back and drop me dangling by one arm

on the edge of the half-eaten cliff.

I won’t let myself fall, but I don’t want to pull myself up.

I’m ambivalent. I’m ambivalent forever now.

But if you were here, looking down on me and saying,

“Grab my hand, grab my hand,” I would, I know, I surely would.

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