Every library, church, and university,
the truths which call to me silently
as I drift through a museum,
all my friends’ conversations, the movement
of animals looking for food: all told me
what I couldn’t face; even my own poetry,
hectoring, moral, sad,
was trying to tell me what mom and dad
both told me once, a long time ago.
Libraries, churches, schools, my poetry:
an endless reflecting pool of superfluity.
Yup. Now I know.