TO WRITE IT
You must always be alone.
But don't beg a soupscrap of charity
or birdcrumb of tolerance.
Shift for yourself.
As furniture heaves off your life
you'll love your deliverance.
Until loneliness slips in, scrawny
and hungry, Miss Loneliness, over the
barrenness, bribing with company.
Restlessness, one of her attendants.
And the drunk twins, of course,
Memory and Remorse.
Refuse them. Stay
faithful to Silence, just
Silence, sliding between that breath
and now this breath, severing the tick
from the tock on the alarm clock,
measuring the absence of all else.
And the presence, the privilege.
Anne Stevenson
