Grand Mal
Misprints make him restless still
By being not quite wrong. Is this
Another tiny crease preceding
Total folding of the world
As images from either side
Fail to match but dip and slide
Attaching half a floating face
To a poster on the wall?
The first time that a book dissolved
Before his eyes was in a French class -
A trompe l’oeil he might have said
Had language not already left him
Soundless, dropping like a dead thing,
Waking later with no answer
For the problem he’d become.
One consultant reassured
His parents it could be controlled;
Then turned to tell him how he shared
Pathology with Caesar and
Perhaps as well with Dostoevsky
Which seemed scarcely consolation
For permanent uncertainty.
Sunlight glancing off the sea
Disturbs a shining worm that sleeps
Behind his eye. And as it swims
It imitates the filament
Within the naked bulb he dreads
Which hangs beside a door that opens
Only inwards and whose sudden
Flashing is the final warning
The handle is about to turn.
Page(s) 54
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