IV - John Ciardi (from 'As If')

I look through my dead friend's eyes at the house of love:
plaster scabs from lath, windows break out
in toothy gapes, doors stagger from their pins.
See what a feast this is, my love, my love,
our shelves of mouse turds, dusts, and dirty damps!

I try this vison on like the wrong glasses
and every straightness quivers to a blur,
and every surface whorls to drink me in.
Well then, this is a world for twisted eyes.
Or if my eye offend me I'll pluck it out.

And still be chanceled in our breathing bed,
the dusk behind the taper and the cup,
as I was once—a holy man, though I lost
my holy ghost, my terror, and my sin
when I had got my own death down by heart.

And there's no nonsense like it. If I forgive
that death, I lose my last prayer. Let us live.



[From:
Ciardi, J. (1955) As If; poems new and Selected. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, p10]


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