The Wish To Be Believed

It is never enough to know what you want.
The brick in your hand, dampened but solid, crumbles,
and a boundary being built, in the midst of building,
stops. (Why shouldn’t one say what it is like?
How would they ever know, otherwise?)

You find in your pocket a key, two keys,
one with a curlicued stem, heavy, absurd,
the other perfectly blank, anonymous.
Who know what they open; you glance at keyholes.
It is like – you can’t, after all, say exactly.

And the rooms, supposing you enter them calmly,
are different from your own; one is bare,
with a gilt-framed mirror facing the door.
Suppose you are tempted to insert your face~
you see a face, and the door closing.

And you go on the half-built boundary,
clicking the keys together, entering.
And you reach, finally, a vivid, absolute place,
and stand in the center, saying to someone,
“Believe. Believe this is what I see.”

Poetry, November 1965, Volume 107, Number 2
Henry Rago, editor. Chicago, Illinois.