@@@@@Better to put it out of your mind
@@@@@Better to put it out of
your mind completely, and in your old age,
creeping senility will take care of the rest
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Oh, some of that old ability may still remain -
like scar-tissue on the dura of the brain from an
old injury (caused by falling out of a pony-trap,
let's say) - and you might have to find ways to
let that out once in awhile, to express it like a
build-up of pus from an infection that will never
quite healSo you get interested in other
people's artYou become, in fact, a patron of the
artsAnd if that's still not enough? Why, maybe
you begin to collect china figures and buildings
You begin to build yourself a China TownNo one
will call creating such tableaux art, but it's
certainly imaginative, and the regular exercise of
the imagination - its visual aspect in particular
- is enough to make it stop
Make what stop?
The itch, of course
I scratched at my right arm, passed through it,
and for the ten thousandth time found only my ribs
I flipped back the cover of my pad to the first
sheet
Start with a blank surface
816
It called to me, as I was sure such blank sheets
had once called to herBecause white is the absence of memory,
the color of can't rememberAnd
when you do, the itch will go awayFor awhile the
confusion will subside
Please stay on the Key, she had saidNo matter
what happens
I thought that might be trueSomething
that could have been a cartOr possibly a ponytrap,
standing still and waiting for the pony
"They lived here happily enough," I told the empty
studio"Father and daughtersThen Elizabeth fell
out of the pony-trap and started to draw, the offseason
hurricane exposed the debris field, the
little girls drownedThen the rest of them pop
off to Miami, and the trouble stopsAnd, when
they came back nearly twenty-five years late