Commonplace Book

Dismemberment: when in the dark
There is a continent of your memory, somewhere,
carried by the frivolous tide
of everything that isn't you.
Each morning, you welcome the low tide.
You welcome each sun
that blinds you away from that continent.

But when the storm comes, you remember:
nothing is really quiet.
When the earthquake comes
cracks appear in your mental furniture.
When the moon comes it displays
your passing shadow - a stooped loneliness
so much taller than you.
And yet you're not moving. No, you're not moving.

In the dark, you listen to the world shed its silences
and dream of bruising yourself
against a body, or a sharpened soul
to break like an ice-pick that continent.

When in the dark somebody comes
the continent will float away, dismembered.

And you too will wake up on a breakaway piece,
alone and naked.
When in the dark somebody comes.

-- Kapka Kassabova, dismemberment, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1998.