Innocence

Didion said that it ends when you’re stripped 

of the delusion

that you like yourself. 

People burned themselves into my eyes

with their beauty and intelligence.

I chose not to see them.

The Quad opened onto a vast data center

in the Bypath Meadow. 

Seductive accountants murmured, 

“We love you. Now you must pay.”

The attic in which I gathered the sordid sheets

of my artistic misprisions—

the botched self-portrait, the miniaturized epic—

became a womblike garret 

at the Museum of Lost Bohemias.

My mother stood flickering on a porch,

waving farewell, her silent film

decayed beyond preservation.

I was walking to Hart Crane’s resting place

when I encountered a famed neurosurgeon,

who held up finely tapered fingers,

insured for millions,

and made a tiny incision on the air.

Tell me how I fell into your lap

and didn’t break you.

Tell me how we found this mouse hole

where we nibble crumbs and curl to sleep 

whisker to tail.

Tell me how you can love a mouse

who took a hundred lifetimes

to impersonate a poet.