You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Versions of a Miserabilist

One thought, from over the river: the mosquitoes
lost the smell of blood in me half way across.

Old Eden verity--I am no more to blame for my death
than I was for the sleazy rendezvous of my birth.

God alters selfish men--now that they have no face,
he has them regard the face, he teaches them how

they should have lived in a universe whose every centre is
a little pot of self-regard, a little like yours.

*

This is the end of money, though we have black fingers;
this the seedy afterlife of things. Everything poised,

as if the next step were already on stand-by:
like a star in the cavity the pilot light keeps

the steady job of incremental burning.
The meter wheel spins round and round towards

the astronomical bill that will never be paid.
These are your concerns. The fridge, my symbol,

persists in its puddle and on-off fugue. Just when
you think it is finally dead, it rambles to life.


Subscribe to The New Republic for only $29.97 a year--75% off cover price!

By Tim Liardet