Brian Glaser

Daoist Eclogue

Poet:
I want to be forgotten someday:
not ignored,—forgotten.
 
Custodian:
I take the discarded paper from your office.
No one will ever ask me for it.
 
Poet:
Once you left your dusting rag
On my bookshelf.
 
I imagined when I found it
you had rested at midnight
and found something there
you could take home.
 
Custodian:
Some of the secrets that I have to know
are lonely and sad.
 
What I found in your books
will rest among them
like locket’s clasp.
 
Poet:
So—we are not so very different.
We read the book of darkness
with our heart and then our eyes.
 
Custodian:
And yet we are not so very similar.
I sleep in daylight
because I must.
 
Poet:
When will our causes join?
 
Custodian:
They have been joined forever.
Our magic is the hurt we nurse
like a knotted sash.

Brian Glaser has published four books of poems and many essays on poetry and poetics. He teaches history and art at Chapman University in Orange, California.