Paper is neither kind nor cruel only white in its neutrality and I have for reality now the brown bar of my arm moving in broken rhythms across this dead place. All the poems I have ever written are historical reviews of a now absorbed country a small judgement hawking and coughing them up I have ejected them not unlike children now my throat is clear perhaps I shall speak again. All the poems I have ever written make a small book the shedding of my past in patched conceits moulted like snake skin, a book of leavings now I can do anything I wish I can love them or hate them use them for comfort or warmth tissues or decoration dolls or Japanese baskets blankets or spells; I can use them for magic lanterns or music advice or small council for napkins or past-times or disposable diapers I can make fire from them or kindling songs or paper chains Or fold them all into a paper fan with which to cool my husband’s dinner.