Your diary, my dearest
ratpack, was passed to me
in serial sequence,
by middle-men with names
like ‘Prince’ or ‘Boy’.
When the ingathering
was complete, a pile
reaching to my knees,
I mused upon your
posthumous command:
BURN EVERYTHING UNREAD …
I am, my dear,
your most obedient liar.
I read, reread,
then fed the slim
incinerator till she
glowed a coral-pink.
The ghost of Max
Brod made no move
to intervene, busy
at the book-burning fringe,
accosting beetles with an
entomologist’s fleur-de-lis.
‘Of love’s errant hour’
‘In the house of doppelgang’
‘On the feast-day of an unwed saint’
‘He would live, like Alcibiades, intimate with his sister’
‘To an aspirant Casanova’
‘Blues for Babieca’
‘Love-letter to an aqueduct’
‘Prayer on a final lapse’
Each day’s entry ends
the same: a title
to be fleshed out
in your next reincarnation.
I nod, and empty memory,
a paltry list
of petty bills unpaid.