11 July 2010

Counting out the Coffee Spoons

counting out the coffee spoons in
the sleep-stupid morning, counting out
the cries in the night, counting the
strands in the cobweb, counting
out the six grey hairs on her head discovered
just this morning and herself so
terrible at mathematics--however
will it all add up, this
assemblage of ends and oddments,
how to enter it, messy-black on
the fine-lined pages of a ledger?

blotting my copybook, the
perpetual cloud mists and
blesses me again and I
respond mea culpa, mea culpa,
mea maxima culpa

and, to that end, amen!

1 comment:

Liam said...

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock