This is a poem in several short parts called "The Man Closing
Up."
And it consists of improvisations
on themes taken from a French poet named Guillevic.
One.
Like a deserted beach, the man closing up.
Broken glass on the rocks, and seaweed
coming in to hang up on the rocks.
Walk with care, it's slippery here.
Old pilings, rotted, broken like teeth, where a pier was,
a mouth, and the tide coming in.
The man closing up is like this.
Two.
He has no hunger, for anything, the man closing up.
He would even try stones, if they were offered.
But he has no hunger for stones.
Three.
He would make his bed, if he could sleep on it.
He would make his bed with white sheets
and disappear into the white, like a man diving,
if he could be certain that the light would not keep him awake,
the light that reaches to the bottom.
Four.
The man closing up tries the doors.
But first he closes the windows.
And before that even he had looked out the windows.
There was no storm coming that he could see.
There was no one out walking at that hour.
Still, he closes the windows and tries the doors.
He knows about storms and about people
and about hours like that one.
Five.
There is a word for it, a simple word, and the word goes around.
It curves like a staircase, and it goes up like a staircase,
and it is a staircase, an iron staircase
on the side of a lighthouse.
All in his head.
And it makes no sound at all in his head, unless he says it.
Then the keeper steps on the rung, the bottom rung,
and the ascent begins, clangorous, rung after rung.
He wants to keep the light going, if he can.
But the man closing up does not say the word.