Dan Chiasson

Things traced by what they trace: the flashlight,



not the slingshot...as though to orbit was the point.



 



As though going round and round reiterating



were a form of argument; the way a globe is spun;



 



the way, cleaving the air, the boomerang must zip



whatever it unzipped, the carousel horse gallop



 



idiotically to its tune, its smile painted on.



As though a beat was an adventure. The insufficient margin.



 



The margin in all things makes them too valuable to be



any value at all, the inscription To Chester, from Wystan



 



that surplus in the chastity, To Chester; a line



ruining, by embodying it, its potential power;



 



remembered looking forward, as though not one minute more



on the planet won’t be, and it won’t be, the undoing



 



of everything I did, the boomerang returning, its limit shot,



From Wystan, its limit never met, the horizon near



 



my body worn as a light sweater, something thrown on



on a cold night, getting colder, near the end of summer.

It is the nature of this game to want possession

then to want to give it up

to get it back so you can give it up again.



 Nobody stops to ponder the ball, the way John Keats

pondered a cue ball’s “roundness,

smoothness, volubility”: its joy in being hit.



Imagine the score is tied, and I take the ball away

In order to sketch it, or incorporate it

Into some kind of quasi-tribal dance routine...



I thought we had agreed to play. I thought you said

We’d play and play all day, beating and being beaten,

Taking turns at losing, learning its advantages



for a young man’s character, then changing fates.

What kind of game is this, your going away forever,

sending word, years later, that you’d died?