The Man Who Was Solved

Now understanding why a Time Machine
could not be invented, he
sat helplessly within a round
room of windows —
played one jukebox song
about a lovely morning when
the stars began to fall,
and quietly accepted all his life.

And drank the coffee, felt
such calmness it was almost like
his body was a fine transparency
of light-hued glass
high above some congregation worshipping
strange New England gods,
among them, Christ
who was rendered out of final things.

Each man and woman holds
a lifetime as
an artist grips his pencil—with
ease or loneliness or strength;
a different drawing or a different style
can only mean
time has shifted through
the variations of our countless lives,

he thought, and then
a girl in dungarees
followed by a boy with massive hair,
sat down with him; they asked
him all the criminal
questions of Americans in fear
and as he talked with them
he cried. Turning away, he cried.

[Contents]

Acknowledgments

to everyone

Anon—his wanderings and explanations

NOTE: Anon should be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable:
A'non.

various Time Machine Poems