Insects

Abstract

Insects Richard Ogar Vacant shuttlesWeave the wind. I have no ghosts,An old man in a draughty houseUnder a windy knob. —T. S. Eliot I sit alone in this over-stuffed roomWatching my shadows crawl across the wallsLike spiders, or their ghosts;Black clouds of smirking thunder shadowingThe faded gods on their OlympusOf yellow paper peelingMock Pan fiddling with his pipes. Perhaps I should explain:A steady rain began with my birth,The night sky bellowed unflashedAnd the stars strode by, oblivious.Two-faced rain,Floating the flowers and rotting their roots. Above my head a bare bulb rocks,Haloed with a haze of bugs, like [End Page 5] Frenzied memories, flocking to a light.(The insects here are brown and brittle,Bark-fragments of a blasted tree.Squeezed between the fingers,They show no blood.) What are these memories but dreamsTurned inside-out?I should write them down,Pluck their wingsTo walk on doddering feet,But I cannot remember which are true,Which false . . . . What matter,After the bulb has burst,The wire snapped with too much heat?I will write them down.Once through the mindBoth dream and memory are past:This is enough for me. [End Page 6] Footnotes This poem originally appeared in Red Cedar Review, Vol. 1, 1963. Copyright © 2011 Michigan State University Board of Trustees