Gouldian Kit

What makes you think I’m an eccentric, he said, in London

To the rag of the reporters who had gathered to report

On his eccentricities — the tin sink light enough for traveling, but

Deep enough to swallow his exquisite hands in water filled with ice.

A budgerigar accompanies, perched atop the fugue of Hindemith.

                               

                                 You are trembling now like the librarian reading

                                 To herself out loud in her Arctic room

Composed entirely of snow.

A broadcast (high fidelity) bound by the quiet of the land and

The Mennonite who told him

                                We are in this world, but are not of this world,

You see. From the notebook of  your partial list of symptoms, phobias:

Fever, paranoia, polio (subclinical), ankle-foot phenomenon,

The possibility of  bluish spots. Everything one does is fear

Not being of this world or in this world enough.

                                There is no world I know, without some word of   it.