A young girl is reading in a white armchair.
On the crimson tablecloth is a pink rose
in a glass of water. (She has kept the bloom
from when she was weaving flowers – its petals
superfluous to her design). The book
she is reading she first read three years ago,
when she was seven: its themes – of childhood,
and alchemy, and unambiguous frontiers
only beyond which evil thrives – enclose like
the high arms of her chair, though she is tall,
and is lithe like a fawn. In another room,
socially distant on a coral sofa
with deep cushions, an old woman, lovely
as she has always been, is reading a book
she has never read: about murders,
in a city – of revolution
and compliance, of concrete highways
and ancient lanes – she will never travel to;
of love difficult, transcendent. An old man,
shorter than he was, and a mite ursine,
socially distant on a chaise longue
in an adjacent room, is also reading
a book he has never read: a walled garden
of distant voices; unrequited love;
age and youth immured in anxiety; fire
the inexorable destination,
and the anonymity of ash.
Tomorrow, because to be human,
almost whatever the odds, is to try
to be hopeful, the girl will climb the stairs,
and the couple, at her call, will leave their books,
and become spectators. At the fourth stair
she will stop, turn, and, using the banister
for leverage, jump up into the air –
the ancient balustrade and balusters,
indifferent to the fall of empires,
will quiver like saplings.
By David Selzer