FOR O, FOR O, THE HOBBY-HORSE IS FORGOT

Robert Hamilton

I am not real. None of this is. 
Otherwise I would know you know I exist. 
You hold me between finger and thumb, 
brittle as a spider after a forest fire. 

When the locomotive blasts 
its lonesome tritone, 
snow tumbles from a tree limb. 

We are no classicists, watching as 
poisonous caterpillars, flamenco-bright, 
inch down the vertebrae  
of Racine’s skeleton.  
At least one of us is only a specter, without 
even the dignity of calcium joists. 

I remember Yeltsin crying in a Houston supermarket 
but in this desolate century I am too tired  
even to hate capitalism. 
I am a homunculus of nerve-tips. 
I am a cosmonaut bonking against his tether. 
You must be terrified too. Wasn’t that our ride just there, 
leaving for good?  
Anyway, if you’re reading this, 
you know who you are, what you did, why I deserved it. 
You aren’t, but if you do, come find me. I’ll wait.

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