The Set

1.

If we do this well enough,
the stage will fall away and our children
will consider it a good life.

They’ll sing from their chests,
and they won’t recognize the costumes
or the printed cardboard apple

from the first act, and they’ll turn around
and around like cats to lay down
in what we say is light from the sun.

For a long time, they won’t see
the moon for what it is: a tear
in the high, dark fabric.

2.

What did I swallow to believe it?
The steady sound of rain on the roof.
The outside pressing in like that.

Eventually, my mother confessed
I’d have to walk down the side stairs,
through the aisles and out of the theater

once and for all. A pitiful applause
as I reached those double doors.
Outside was blinding information.

3.

Oh that anything can break through
the sound of our violence
with its singing! The worst part:

it wasn’t even a god who called me
to do it. No one insisted
on my fruit or multiplications.

I was convinced by the complicated
world, tilted suddenly on my axis
in that glaring, sterile room.

The materials appeared as if
by magic. With one arm, I held her.
With the other, I built the set.