Improv 2, Week 2

passage from Larkin's "Aubade"

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying and being dead.
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.


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I get half-drunk all day, and work all night.
Moaning at the endless verge of carpet
at my feet. I fix my hand atop the circle
of the glass, harboring the weeping ice
and mimic the sound of the canaries
as they lung out the unresting of men.
There is nothing here: no Spanish Citadel,
or Maypole--half expecting a rain, half expecting
to just run out of ribbon, as it foxes in and out.
Erecting ritual only forget the last one performed.

When the day turns into a balance of plates,
I find no interest in the feral interrogation of porcelain.
To peck at the tiniest scratch on the teacup is to foster
a loin-sized roar in decorum. Fingers are the loudest
of all predators. The grooves of pennies claim
the fingerprints of every child. To know the real
killer is to steal the copper of school yard games.