She said that words come from a divine source
tap a cloud, wave a flag, divert their course.
she said words come easily, she’d inquire within
like a guest would exorcise a pallid skin.
she said, and I could see her eyes straining
through bumblebee sunglasses,
I wrote because I had time for that
awful thing, I had six years for ink
to impress itself, and ten more for a press,
eleven to be read, and twelve to be known, and after —
after, she said, her eyes visible under dark glass
there won’t be enough time or silence
in all the world, your course will be set
and your last word will be a signature.
She shook her head
and her dreadlocks frolicked
for absent freedoms
to produce a truth in the making
to say what it is,
or what it wasn’t,
what for me
could be five years or twenty, but for her is
distilled in future tense — why she
wears sunglasses on such dull days, not for the weather.
an afterlife ill fits the novelist
whose life cannot end.
with a name on some lists, doors open, and
fellow beds become bedfellows, and
you’ll hate these cages.