And this book is filled with different sequences,
and one of them is called "An Eye for the Distance,"
and it is a sequence of, I suppose you call them
prose poems, which is not something
I think of myself as writing, but I did.
And this one from it is called "Marbles."
When I think of marbles I always think of my father who,
once in a while, carried marbles in his pocket
and he liked to pull them out and say,
I still got all my marbles.
"Marbles have no edge.
We should be kinder to people who covet them.
This in a dream, and I think of Eli who gives dreams to Leo,
dreams for a time passed 5,000 years.
When was that, and why?
And I think of my father, who did not
like to speak of dreams, they were less than real
and to be discounted.
He gave them to me, mine, difficult and impossible
not to undertake.
Impossible no, no refusal.
He, my father, sometimes carried marbles in his jacket pocket.
He had objective proof that he still had all his marbles.
All, in this context, is problematic.
What did he have, in whose beginning?
And I do not remember if, 15 years ago, he
died carrying them all.
I once discounted his humor, a simple forwardness
to step simply forward, an act.
Not holding a stake in dreams, he
could not help except in dreams, words which have
no edges, dreams of marbles.
What have I been given?"