Still Water
Prose Poems
Copyright @ 1989 by Arthur Garfunkel
ISBN 0-525-24795-5
Used by persmission of Author - All Rights Reserved
45
Maybe life is
like Lorne's bulletin board when he'd
sit up there at Thirty Rock—Then put up the three-
sixty-five, arrange them in their tribes, honor their
traits and dwell in them cyclically, filling in the dates
until life is full.
Put down June
nineteenth. (All, in time, are marking
points, memories, memorials.) Call to mind the
midnight moment—the first of the year. Think
noon goes by where June meets July. And every
clockwork month—two hours of the calendary day.
See me along
a sliver of river, through Luxembourg
city at five-to-one. The day is July eleven. I walk
awaiting the first of spring, still encompassed by her
ways: born in the week of the first of fall, suicide at
summer's eve.
For nine
point nine five years now, you have tyran-
ized my soul, usurped commemoration, stopped
time still…and on my wrist you left the tick of
history to beat…nineteen minutes to two o'clock
…twenty days until we meet.
LuxembourgJuly 1985