Perfect Poems

Against the Evidence

As I reach to close each book

lying open on my desk, it leaps up   

to snap at my fingers. My legs

won't hold me, I must sit down.

My fingers pain me

where the thick leaves snapped together   

at my touch.

                       All my life

I've held books in my hands

like children, carefully turning

their pages and straightening out   

their creases. I use books

almost apologetically. I believe

I often think their thoughts for them.   

Reading, I never know where theirs leave off   

and mine begin. I am so much alone   

in the world, I can observe the stars   

or study the breeze, I can count the steps   

on a stair on the way up or down,   

and I can look at another human being   

and get a smile, knowing

it is for the sake of politeness.

Nothing must be said of estrangement   

among the human race and yet

nothing is said at all

because of that.

But no book will help either.

I stroke my desk,

its wood so smooth, so patient and still.   

I set a typewriter on its surface

and begin to type

to tell myself my troubles.

Against the evidence, I live by choice.

David Ignatow

via Poetry Foundation