Not Sadness Which is Always There

After I had learned to live with my sadness

There came another, more disturbing strangeness

Whose purpose I could never understand, who always came late at night

And who kept me awake all hours

Until I turned on the headlamp to read,

As if finally forced to concede,

Not understanding that some things have nothing to do with the Will.

I who had conducted my life so that

I could not do other that what I do,

Who had steered my heavy ship around and around

Until it could only steer in one direction,

I saw no way to put this turmoil to good use.

It was not sadness, which is always there

like a cat I raised from childhood and stroke absent-mindedly

Not even loneliness, which I had trained to back down

In the presence of good company,

But something more needy.

Even as I sit with friends in the Hungarian pastry shop

Dawdling over sweets,

I am shaken by the urge to run home

To be alone with it, to let it work be over,

The mice combing the bag of day-old crumbs

Raking my stomach for overlooked mistakes.