by DF Lewis
A cold, empty electric light bulb,
Unlit, glints the day on its rounded surface,
As a shrugging man
Peers in at the door
To see who is there.
He retires, knowing the room to be bare,
Save for this dangling glass, this
Potentiality for light.
Now, nothing stirs, nothing
Curves its back, arches
Bristles to the silence; nothing?
A careless cloud passes glibly
Before the reflected sun,
And the glass container of hanging
Quasi-power, has dead gleams
In its heart, glintless, dim, dull.
Beneath this transparent breast
Are the swept boards
Of a forgotten floor,
Even now deeper lost -
Than when carpeted in fur for the rich.
But, can we call the room empty?
Within this cube of space
There are pervasive recognitions
That drift, spider-like,
Through the dust and air,
And point to embraces that were folded.
Loving arms in a girdle of fire
Are now ghosts, quiet shufflings
In the silence of inherent memory.
The bulb is the lover's dead eye.
(written 1967; published 'The Purple Patch' 1989)
