THE MYTH OF PERFECTABILITY

I hang the still life of flowers

by a window so it can receive

the morning light, as flowers must.

But sun will fade the paint,

so I move the picture to the exact center

of a dark wall, over the mantel

where it looks too much like a trophy—

one of those animal heads

but made up of blossoms.

I move it again to a little wall

down a hallway where I can come upon it

almost by chance, the way the Japanese

put a small window in an obscure place,

hoping that the sight of a particular landscape

will startle them with beauty as they pass

and not become familiar.

I do this all day long, moving

the picture or sometimes a chair or a vase

from place to place. Or else

I sit here at the typewriter,

putting in a comma to slow down

a long sentence, then taking it out,

then putting it back again

until I feel like a happy Sisyphus,

or like a good farmer who knows

that the body’s work is never over,

for the motions of plowing and planting continue

season after season, even in his sleep.