Circle Drawn in Water by Franz Wright

Circle Drawn in Water

I think somewhere there is a room

in which I am living

an old man

in the future,

in a windy

room where I'm sitting and reading

trying to make out

bent over a three-legged table

these words I'm now writing—

in what will then be

passing for the present,

blindly

trying to read to remember

the room

the light the time of day

when I first set them down

What a pile of shit, I'll say

and What was her name

What the hell

was her name

I will slowly get up then

and walk to the window, this time

this place dear to me

even in the muteness

the absolute unsayableness

of the simplest thing in pain

the way it was, exactly

as it was

when I began