I didn't want to write about a lot of lives.
I understood the novelists' urge, I liked
Novels, plays, shows, and movies. But I
Knew that, however legion and polyglot
That solitary English pillar, I, body only
Lived one life, with all the others folded
Up inside and dying all the time. So I
Didn't want to pretend I could extend
Over generations of I's, over braided
Rivers of genes and genealogies, lies
About blood and origins, beginnings
And ends that could never be mine.
I served to be a slave to my limitations
So that I could study, maybe understand
What limitation meant. It didn't mean
Only that other bodies were mean, however
Much they were, and they were, of course
They were. It didn't mean the history
Of patriarchs or a people, of belief, although
Belief was tied up in it like breath is tied
Up in blood for us, for bodies like ours.
It meant, here, here I was, tangled
And dangling, descended from billions
Of bodies and thousands, at a minimum,
Of tales, but only caught here, in this tree,
Upside down and laughing manically,
Then pretending to be dour and severe.
Rules and laws were never really either,
But it was true, and you might as well know
It will be true for you, if you're you, that
I was attached to the body that dreamed
As it dangled and changed, confined
By the surprise that the tiniest puff of air
Was always different but that the ghost
That haunted the changes was much the same.
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