Poem
Sein und Zeit
by Judith Bishop •
We can walk into a room not knowing.
It doesn’t happen every time.
A white room can be painted to be pure.
I mean, just to show us that it’s clean.
But it doesn’t have to be.
We can walk into a room
not knowing whether,
or when, or even that.
That
can be the hardest room.
Only you will know.
First there is the walking.
The floor, a chair or two.
The posters
of visions
of someone else’s visit
to a room. Take a chair.
Only then the talk begins,
like a reckoning of beads,
like the body measures sweat,
words wrong
as a rainbow that has paled
to a shadow of itself.
There is always an end.
We can stand and walk again.
We can leave the room in silence,
carrying its moment
in and out of days.
