Page 54 - WTP Vol. VIII#2

47
Variation on Closet and Shirt
“I think only too often that what we constantly need is a fresh start – a fresh start every day, like a clean shirt.”
— Wallace Stevens (in a letter to Henry Church)
No, go ahead, inhabit it, we’ve
already laid indignities upon
this shirt you wouldn’t hurl upon a sock. And yet it was a garment with dignity —
listen to me, I’m such a boor —
it’s lying there before us, its fabric
a condemnation of compromised care, if not misuse. But let me just suggest
that it was once a serious shirt, buttoned to its purpose, unlike those soi-disant worldly chemises, class clowns that flounced about,
their clothesline prevarications a dumb show of threads gone askew as if whatever was on their mind were fraught with something clever
and off the cuff, which is
to say, every so often, sending the frenzied initials on their sleeves into stitches.
BruCe roBinSon