THE SPIDER WEDDING
The spiders in my mirrors have copulated.
I saw your body fall through the clouds
below me. The night was quiet & I should have
heard. All I could hear was the wind through
the pines & the mouse that lives beneath
our bed. The mouse sounds like two pine
boards moved against one another.
When I rose from bed last night,
the house was still. I thought about
the lamb with no thought about the wolf.
The cricket in the night’s throat holds the doctorate
of eschatology. The wandering viceroy in the night
with his churlish & diminutive script ogles
darkness through darkness. I feel sorry
for the wind that must touch his face &
I feel sorry for sleep that knows everything
there is to know. I saw your body fall through
the clouds below me. Through darkness
into darkness I touch your face.
I wed the spiders, each to each, just after dawn
on the twelfth of the month.
I performed the service in the room of the house
with the window into which the sun sets.
Cast into ether, the spiders soon took possession
of every mirror in the house, their webs like
filament in a light bulb, causing the mirrors to shine
when the lights in a room were turned on. Spent
of any fortune, I have left the house to them.
All that remains inside the house are the mirrors
inhabited by the spiders, who spin wigs for ghosts
who pantomime comedies as clowns, flawlessly
convincing in their representations of colors.
I have left them to themselves.
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