There’ s a crack in this glass so fine we can’ t see it,
and in the blue eye of the candleflame’ s needle
there’ s a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection
that could contain, like a microchip, an epic
treatise on beauty, except it’ s in the eye of the beheld.
And at the base of our glass there’ s nothing
so big as a tiny puddle, but an ooze, a viscous
patina like liquefied tarnish. It’ s like a text
so short it consists only of the author’ s signature,
which has to stand, like the future, for what might
have been: a novel, let’ s say, thick with ambiguous life.
Its hero forgets his goal as he nears it, so that it’ s
like rain evaporating in the very sight of parched
Saharans on the desert floor. There, by chance, he meets
a thirsty and beautiful woman. What a small world!