To wear one’s body is a thing I know—
And yet to be driven just as if a car
That drove itself would not deign to allow
My exit—yet I feel my footsteps jar.
No one likes pain, but one would think that should
One live with it like bodily tinnitus,
And though flesh cannot be turned into wood,
That it might grow with time less torturous—
But what befalls instead is that the birds
Sing songs becoming of gigantic flies
And blows that fall, articulate as words
Instruct the body in its own cowardice.
Built to fall away from mean or plumb
I fall, yet not without sense of direction
Entirely: The voice is never dumb
That calls me to King Richard’s cursed election.
Clarence Caddell is an Australian poet and critic. His collection of poems about divorce and family separation, Broken Words, is newly published with Bonfire Books.