When you don’t care what others think
you begin to think.
The glance finds its essence. The look dies.
Are the miscreants ever going to move out? They do.
The empty bedroom becomes your first room.
You don’t spend money. You have it for once.
You own time for the first time.
Health is better than youth.
Excitable news fades away. You understand
it was always excitable. Never news. Never new.
Soft delicious fruit is soft delicious fruit.
Mozart teaches you what music is at last
on a quiet evening, half-listening,
like a first date, but calm.
Jokes seem mathematical, not funny.
Doctors are bratty kids. Teachers, amateurs.
You realize you could have done anything.
Misery runs away in the face of death
which is yours, long before the delicate blindness comes,
the final empire of your breath.