The most horrible disease I know
is a disease I first learned
when I moved to the Mid-west.
It is a form of impossible perfection.
It has to do with window panes without spots,
with floors without footprints, with
cabinet tops no one sees, that have dust.
Cleanliness may be next to godliness,
but godliness is next to impossible.
The most horrible disease I know is next
to you, when you live in the Mid-west.
Shame is the footprint of a raindrop on a pane.
Shame is a neighbor who stops by, unannounced,
who discovers your jacket on a chair, who
did not know, until age fifty-three, that
there are barbarians who do not dust
their interior worlds to non-static purity.
It is a Let's-Pretend world, in which
every normal, forgotten cobweb is a sin,
and sloth is reading a book, instead.
It is perfection as the enemy of the good.
It is pretension as a good; as a possibility.
It is isolation from what we all are, alone,
that keeps us alone, afraid of each other.
It is to say that we are not what we are
when no one else sees; when we are ourselves.
There are pigs. There is filth.
There is stench, and grime, and neglect.
But that is not the enemy.
The enemy is recent dust, and a web
in the stairwell, from a hungry spider.
The enemy is a demand that we be antiseptic;
that no one should know our hearts beat irregularly.
We hide from each other so that no one will know
that we are like they are: dusty, and tired,
comfortable, with books on the floor and that,
when it rains, it rains on our window panes.
The dearest man I ever knew
was my advisor at the University of Chicago,
who told me once how beautiful was Audrey Hepburn
in Paris, where she shook his hand, and his heart
stood stiller, still. Once, later--home alone,
and he blind--he make lunch for me.
We talked of what I do not remember.
I remember the crumbs he could not see.
I remember that, had there been a thousand crumbs,
nothing might have mattered less than that
Joe Sittler did not see the crumbs on his table.
And I do not remember of what we spoke:
we spoke of friends, and ideas, and possibilities.
is a disease I first learned
when I moved to the Mid-west.
It is a form of impossible perfection.
It has to do with window panes without spots,
with floors without footprints, with
cabinet tops no one sees, that have dust.
Cleanliness may be next to godliness,
but godliness is next to impossible.
The most horrible disease I know is next
to you, when you live in the Mid-west.
Shame is the footprint of a raindrop on a pane.
Shame is a neighbor who stops by, unannounced,
who discovers your jacket on a chair, who
did not know, until age fifty-three, that
there are barbarians who do not dust
their interior worlds to non-static purity.
It is a Let's-Pretend world, in which
every normal, forgotten cobweb is a sin,
and sloth is reading a book, instead.
It is perfection as the enemy of the good.
It is pretension as a good; as a possibility.
It is isolation from what we all are, alone,
that keeps us alone, afraid of each other.
It is to say that we are not what we are
when no one else sees; when we are ourselves.
There are pigs. There is filth.
There is stench, and grime, and neglect.
But that is not the enemy.
The enemy is recent dust, and a web
in the stairwell, from a hungry spider.
The enemy is a demand that we be antiseptic;
that no one should know our hearts beat irregularly.
We hide from each other so that no one will know
that we are like they are: dusty, and tired,
comfortable, with books on the floor and that,
when it rains, it rains on our window panes.
The dearest man I ever knew
was my advisor at the University of Chicago,
who told me once how beautiful was Audrey Hepburn
in Paris, where she shook his hand, and his heart
stood stiller, still. Once, later--home alone,
and he blind--he make lunch for me.
We talked of what I do not remember.
I remember the crumbs he could not see.
I remember that, had there been a thousand crumbs,
nothing might have mattered less than that
Joe Sittler did not see the crumbs on his table.
And I do not remember of what we spoke:
we spoke of friends, and ideas, and possibilities.
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