Memory IX
doubly worse, or even triply:
that’s what it’s like this time and the next and the next and forever.
it’s this drinking, this carousing, this wild night
that wriggles and churns like wormsin that old milky soul of his
(or hers, I forget)
and but this time it will be better,
they say.
they whisper in their hundreds of indistinct rather melancholy voices,
this time won’t be like last time.
but we would be a fool to believe her,
to trust him.
to have faith.
foolishness.
yes, but in spite of this shortcoming,
this unbridgeable gulf between—
in spite of those quivering nightmare tendricles,
those gleaming liquid poisons—
between us and them,
yes, even with and in and because of those,
there is a chance at some kind of an awakening,
a break from this dark dream world.
***
I don’t know what happened to VIII either. I think I drank too much one night. If this poem isn’t argument against drinking too much while being inclined toward melancholy, I don’t know what is. The state I like least when drinking: being drunk, but not wanting to be in that state any longer, waiting to sober. That’s incredibly tedious.