Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The Hour by Michael Lind

Maybe the moment recurs daily at six, when commuters,

freed from the staring computers,

elbow and bump in unsought intimacy on a station

platform with you, and frustration

rots what is left of your strength. Maybe the hour comes after

dinner, when televised laughter

seeps from a neighboring room; maybe the time is the dead of

night, when you ponder, instead of

dreaming. Whatever the time, you will escape it—by sinking

down with a book, or by drinking secretly out in the dark studio, or by unbuckling

pants on a stranger, or chuckling,

one with a mob, in a deep theater. Soon, though, the hour

comes to corrode all your power,

pleasure and faith with the damp dread that it daily assigns you.

How you evade it defines you.

No comments:

Post a Comment