What if I own more paper clips than I'll ever use in this lifetime? My other possessions are shabby: the house half-painted, the car without a muffler, one dog with bad eyes and the other dog a horny moron. Even the baby has a rash on her neck but then we don't own humans. My good books were stolen at parties long ago and two of the barn windows are broken and the furnace is unreliable and field mice daily feed on the wiring. But the new foal appears healthy though unmanageable, crawling under the fence and chased by my wife who is stricken by the flu, not to speak of my own body which has long suffered the ravages of drink and various nervous disorders that make me laugh and weep and caress my shotguns. But paper clips. Rich in paper clips to sort my writings which fill so many cartons under the bed. When I attach them I say it's your job after all to keep this whole thing together. And I used them once with a rubber band to fire holes into the face of the president hanging on the office wall. We have freedom. You couldn't do that to Brezhnev much less Stalin on whose grave Mandelstam sits proudly in the form of the ultimate crow, a peerless crow, a crow without comparison on earth. But the paper clips are a small comfort like meeting someone fatter than myself and we both wordlessly recognize the fact or meeting someone my age who is more of a drunk, more savaged and hag- ridden until they are no longer human and seeing them on the street I wonder how their heads which are only wounds balance on the top of their bodies. A manuscript of a novel sits in front of me held together with twenty clips. It is the paper equivalent of a duck and a company far away has bought this perhaps beautiful duck and my time is free again. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ONE WAY OF LOVE by ROBERT BROWNING QUATRAIN: THE PARCAE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH LOST TREASURE by MATHILDE BLIND SECOND BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 2 by THOMAS CAMPION THE CRUCIFIX by ADELBERT VON CHAMISSO |