Madeline
Simon
MacCulloch
I am the nothing you need to deny,
Crammed in the box that you carried me off in,
Plucked like a mote from the edge of your eye
To sink like a moon in the tarn-mirrored sky,
And blink with the lid of my premature coffin.
I am the nothing that tortures your ears
Day after day with my rat-busy scratching,
Rasping the itch of your intimate fears.
Nothing is quite as its semblance appears;
Nothing is white as an egg, and it’s hatching.
Now there is nothing afoot on the stair,
Clutching the rail with its stiff-fingered fumbling;
Open the door and the nothing is there,
Raptured and wild in the risen moon’s glare,
Captured at last with the house in its tumbling.
Nothing is ended; the tomb-hollow tale
Echos, re-echos its terrible history:
Nothing, a beauty no custom can stale,
Bleakly revealed at the lift of the veil:
Nothing concealed in its infinite mystery.
