Entry in an Unknown Hand
And still nothing happens. I am not arrested.
By sonic inexplicable oversight
nobody jeers when I walk down the street.
I have been allowed to go on living in this
room. I am not asked to explain my presence
anywhere.
What posthypnotic suggestions were made; and
are any left unexecuted?
Why am I so distressed at the thought of taking
certain jobs?
They are absolutely shameless at the bank——
You’d think my name meant nothing to them. Non–
chalantly they hand me the sum I’ve requested,
but I know them. It’s like this everywhere——
they think they are going to surprise me: I,
who do nothing but wait.
Once I answered the phone, and the caller hung up——
very clever.
They think that they can scare me.
I am always scared.
And how much courage it requires to get up in the
morning and dress yourself. Nobody congratulates
you!
At no point in the day may I fall to my knees and
refuse to go on, it’s not done.
I go on
dodging cars that jump the curb to crush my hip,
accompanied by abrupt bursts of black-and-white
laughter and applause,
past a million unlighted windows, peered out at
by the retired and their aged attack-dogs—
toward my place,
the one at the end of the counter,
the scalpel on the napkin.
