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'Reality is merely that which you can be persuaded of'
announced my frightening but ineffectual Lit Crit lecturer one day.
I wasn't convinced. Back then, which of us was?
A leggy, sophisticated classmate, with an almost ugly mouth
that I thought beautiful (though I knew even then
that was a cliché of romantic fiction), smiled conspiratorially.
Am I on the inside looking out or the outside looking in,
is a non-question I still ask myself. Also, why is my poetry
so prosy? She seemed so together, but years later
had some sort of breakdown. By then poetry
was running round my head like marbles over linoleum.
The twentieth century departed.
I thought there was nothing I could do.
Money can buy what you want,
but it can't buy wanting it.