Something dramatic is going to happen to me soon.
I know this because I feel myself and the whole whirling world
reset to slow motion, and the hotel room I’m in
holds its breath. I see pigeons scatter
and clap their wings. I hear slow, operatic music,
and I feel scores of invisible fingers
fumbling at the threads that hold me together.
The black clouds outside are pregnant women
approaching labor, and as the slivery sunspot
disappears from my carpet, I understand
that every godforsaken thing in this luminous, freeze-framed world,
will drift away, cloudlike,
and as I slow-motion my way to the window,
the birds circle overhead.
I see my hotel mirrored in the windows of another hotel,
and I see 10,000 people, vigilant outside my window.
They shout that I’m the next pope,
that I’m their last hope.
They toss up prayers and pigeons,
and a few detractors shout that I should jump,
which I do, on one leg, safe behind my window.
The world speeds up again, whirling like a windswirl of leaves,
and I see the crowd scatter in all directions
as if to say oh, you’re a poet, not the pope, our mistake,
determined not to notice me, even while I open the window and bellow:
my body is breaking down, too;
my spirit, too, will soon drift far, far off,
and all of you, too, you too.
Pope John Paul II, pray for us.
Robert Creeley too.
(unpublished, uncollected)