This poem is taken from PN Review 91, Volume 19 Number 5, May - June 1993.
Three PoemsTHE HOUSE BESIDE THE SEA
I wore that fiction like a fine white shirt
And asked no favor but to play the part.
- James Merrill
Like a fine what shirt I put it on,
the house beside the sea,
enclosing like a tangy honeymoon
the fiction of a place for you and me?
A fine white shirt.
White? Without my eyes I couldn't see.
I merely felt the shining of the sea.
I have no eyes or teeth, but I can hear.
Are those gigantic scissors near my ear?
Snip. Snip. Snip. Lock hell.
Hell is locked out, I know it. Thank you, though.
No one is here in this salt bungalow
but me, I think. And you? Could you be there,
...
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