The Misremembered World

by Tess Taylor

selected by Eavan Boland

NIGHTMARE

 
Ugly as a potato you huddle
at a cold port at the edge of a city.
You hawk your incomprehensible baubles,
illegible postcards, cracked thimbles, teeth.
Baleful old rubble, it cannot help you.
All the old selves regard you bleakly.
You croon to some rusty vestige,
but a chill wind rustles in the high trees.
It has no need for you, for your salvage:
It belongs to itself, it is getting married.
Leave, it cries, leave. You sell nothing of value.
My happiness has nothing to tell you.


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