Why Your Numbers Do Not Increase

At the hour you climb the stairs
Out of the world of your pains and pleasures
Up to the quiet chambers of the serious
And find the guidebook open on the table
To lesson one, "How to Love the Light,"
You hear the steps of someone climbing down,
Light steps, as if his heavy, golden book
Of duties, followed for years in detail,
Seems now to him a forgery.
And as you vow today to honor truth,
He vows to live from now on for surfaces,
Pies and pearls, not for shadows,
And take in the party tonight in the Topaz Room
And try all the dances,
Those he knows and those he has to fake.

At the hour you love the woman
In the hand-framed photograph on the desk
With no hope of return, as you love the sunrise
Or the bright, oblivious women of Vermeer
Who live alone like worlds, complete, serene,
Someone brushes your door, rushing to the room
Where his love waits in the dark
Flushed with desire only for him.
Never again will he pause
At the window in the hall and watch the light
Burning across the street behind the curtains.
No one whose life is larger than his own
Has ever lived there.

At the hour you feel strong enough
To write a confession for any mess you make,
A confession for any mess of others,
Strong enough to call the image in the mirror responsible
For all calamities, which is only the desire
To be all-powerful, like a god,
The sound of tearing paper reaches your room
And the distant shatter of glass
As someone casts off his craving to respect himself,
A task he never chose on his own
Or might never have chosen had he known more.