Pupil

 

I could no more know

myself than this flame

seated in the air

one quarter of an inch

above its burnt root

– so self-contained a form

you’d think it held in ice –

 

no more know that flame

than one drop of rain

or a single leaf

let alone this draught

slicing in across the sill

nudging the little

corpse-boat of a fly;

 

no more know you, fly,

than this cat – the cat

perhaps but what about

the way it holds us

in a gaze so void

of an idea of self

our own can only fail.

 

Were we to return

that look we might learn

to take something from

nothing, might begin

to steady and see,

figure who we are

in that slit black flame.