JANUARY 2nd (PALEOGRAPHY)

Before the daylight

as Bakis does

again I try

unhinging one of many doors

that keep hundreds of leaves

in tiny, massive chambers

So many critics            

code these rooms,

practice self-love

so much to forget

until the world becomes

a block of wood

the trunk of a tree

I try again to unlatch,

parchment or the like

stacking and binding

in the world at large, the small

world, more capacious and rank

like a fire that consumes itself

for breakfast