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The pattern in the Persian carpet that becomes
A skull at second glance is where you might
Begin this recognition that each trip through
The text recalls the one before, as a drive
From Wellfleet to Truro recalls a road map
From the Thirties as your best and only guide
To what Hopper saw that you might see. Rereading
The poem in progress, I’ve caught three typos
And a solecism, a word that suggests so much more
Than mere error, some fundamental disconnection
If the weft of things where nothing seems coherent
Except by rule, and the rules as arbitrary as the choice,
Right or left, at an unmarked crossroads, no devil
In sight to play let’s make a deal and set your hands
To the slide and strings. I meant to start
With the Renaissance, so it should be a lute, not
Robert Johnson’s small-bodied Gibson, but let’s
Retrace the steps: the figure of a skull hidden
In a rug, momento mori, the songs of Dowland
And Campion, of love—tell me then how the littlest
Of deaths, as unrepeatable as the grandest, becomes
Another madonna and child, or a song that lasts
Centuries out, so no surprise when the player shuffles
I Saw My Lady Weepe up against
Devil’s Got My Woman
Just as I drive past an old relic of a single-pump
Gas station. How many times have I seen it before,
Just not quite this way, which moved me ask you,
You know what I like about Marlowe? He knew
Hell was everywhere and all in the repetition, and he didn’t
Need to say more than once just how much he didn’t
Give a damn.
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