Show Trials, Speak Memory

In a bewildered state approaching grace,

It came to me that being unchosen is not altogether different

And not altogether the same

As being abandoned. 

And then I came across a poem about boyhood, this poem, in fact

(how about that for instantiation?)

STILL LIFE

Boy with roof shingles
duct taped to shins and forearms
threading barbed wire through pant loops.

Boy with a safety pin-clasped
bath towel of a cape
tucking exacto knife into sock.

Boy with rocks. Boy
with a metal grate for a shield.
Boy with a guardian

daemon and flawless skin.
Boy in the shuttered district,
a factory of shattered vials,

green and brown glass.
Boy with a tiny voice
and crooked cursive handwriting,

with bent nails in a pouch,
metal flashing scavenged in bits,
with half a neck tie

tied around the brow
pushing a fire door wide.
Boy with a boy living

The boy in the boy’s head
watches sparse traffic
from a warehouse window

and takes notes on where
overpass paint hides rust,
where the cyan bubbles up

into a patchwork of pock
and crumbling disease,
a thief in the bridge’s body

he doesn’t see, but knows
is coming tomorrow
to swallow his song.

And I became less concerned, less anxious,

about the way in which choice and becoming lost

are wrapped in the tight space of unchosen abandonment. 

And then I think of Brodsky’s self-portrayal at age 40 and

How taking stock of boyhood and taking stock of age 40 are

Not altogether different and not altogether the same,

At least in this bewildered state of grace

With which I’ve been afflicted.