Once again—alas, to begin a poem 

With “once again”—but that’s what you

End up with (or how you begin)—

When you stare at the page at the start 

Of the nameless day confined in a nameless 

Week. You must look at real objects, 

You tell yourself: a cloud or a patch of sky 

Or even an old picture, one of you when

You were a child with a silly smile,

Or an aimless day at the beach collecting

Glass shards, or a picture of the kids now

Grown, living at the other side of the world, 

It will take thirteen hours to reach them.

But there’s always the phone or computer…

Memory, the stuff of pictures and poems,

Is insistent, relentless. And once again

Locked down in the nameless week 

You turn its pages and you don’t know 

Where it will end. Mid-story or the random

Rain.  Must look at real objects, a cloud or 

A patch of sky, the glutinous, adhesive ideas

In things. (Like the virus, but the memory

Is novel.) And so you take up again

That abandoned poem, because

You don’t want to rise from your desk

You don’t really want to walk outside.

 

 

Marne Kilates

20 September 2020

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