As a puppet is free
because he cannot look up
to see the strings,
as a seer voraciously rereads
and memorizes page 35
in order to predict 36
in a huge holy book
whose conclusion already exists
somewhere around 500—so too
every night, in our dreams
so many unwritten poems
gleam on the knife edges of the horizon
while our shuttered eyes are powerless
to read them. Yet
silent, incorporeal, ghosts move to visit
each of these dark cities
off in the distance,
populated with divorcees and fugitives
and orphan children—
whose histories are long epics,
the lines of which will change slightly
with each new generation, because
they must be sung
in order to be remembered.