Error
You probably know which box you put it in. You knew, anyway,
back when boxes were how it all was done. No one then built in
obsolescence. Instead you made your money on weight and style.
I had them on my desk:
- the stapler with the ceramic top;
- the pen tray of solid glass;
- the ink well like a land mine;
- the ruler so thick it could break your arm.
chutes they come. There were errors.
Ricky Valance is not Ritchie Valens. Eisenhower is not Eisenstein.
Moldavia is not Monaco. Cut your finger off and
it doesn’t grow back. That box, though, I still can’t
find it. I knew where it once was. Its memory is like a ghost.
Like those paintings in antiquity that have never been found
or the book about Britain under the Romans that
is now just a title, its existence and all its glorious
illumination a blip in time. Its pages now dust.
When the box does come up all that’s in it is a thin black residue
as if the content had been destroyed a long time back.
Reason’s enigma. Return it. Think of something else.