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One Poem  

Anthony Borruso

Void-Song

    I open door after door,     greening gold, wavy
    wheat stalks,     fields of them, lakes of them,
great rivers of doors     straining upstream
like salmon, only to spawn     die     and birth
    new doors. I will try all of them.
    They say in a fire to feel the knob first,
in the absence of heat     you may proceed.
I have never been so cautious:
    agape, agate, a grape painted door
    in a vine-green wall, I’ll walk the gang-     plank
as the sea’s heaves diminuendo, a silver door
swallows me like a simoom—takes me
    to crestfallen hills of sand, takes me to a bar
    where a lizard king swirls his forked tongue
round a glass of merlot.     The doors
will have nothing of this plain, New England
    existence, they like parchment and train tracks
    their hands want     to rearrange my vertebrae
and make a mansard roof of my skull.
I’m in danger     of letting go, of giving myself
    too completely.     I’m praying,
    door after door—O after O, beefy bold throats,
take me away,     take me back
into your void-song, your whiplash     of womb,
    room, tomb.