William Bibby

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES?  
(Diane Arbus)


She saw this for us in the casual
damage of the maidens, mostly maidens,
whose helpless hands crumpled up the litter
in the bin waste whose helpless minds crumpled.

Some like ghosts in white stockings
or a boy with gaggled eyes
clawing dangerously to light
the empty room, its Christmas tinsel

static, wiring out over the foam and
nylon carpet. A notched corner on 14th St.
became a department store on 36th and Fifth
and she hit America’s tonnage

like an icicle skewering bedrock
her vision growing from back street
to dodging main street to burn.
And the inhabitants of the asylum

rolliflexed away in the soft light.
The prints torn and taped down on the throne
of the dark room’s arms, repeated again
and again, until one of them spoke to us

the 60 year old 12 year old; all the same,
perplexed in the stop bath liquid then fixed,  
then all sudden for ever in hand-grenade light
Am I the only one who’s born?

  

  



                                              WHAT WE CANNOT KNOW


The dog whinnys in her sleep curled by the fires bronze flames.
Your buttons undo as I throw them across the winter water;
your dress yields.
The yellow light reveals

the room carpeted, sofa’d and chaired but with no bed
and outside the window a current lifts off an Atlantic shelf;
the lover left behind.
A sail gentle and kind

brings in a boat’s clustered masts, the way it balances, behaves.
Its exports salvaged by the customs that clear its holds,
the dunnage from the keel,
cargoes that separate or heal.

We never see the whole. Only what commands our attention
as we unfold our clothes, each one a barrier to our absorption.
Our intimacy beguiles
what lies behind our smiles.

The winter finally contracts our identity to solitude
that tries everything, anything, yet remains incomplete;
as the ship turns from the port
and love dwindles to thought.