the chest of crooked drawers
glazed with patined images
of lute players, flute players, and singers
     this was not my design
left in the courtyard in the rain
in the octagonal courtyard of longing
     for too long it seems
I have patrolled these sharp hallways
looking into the cells of the insane
     each and everyone
in different bodies, guises
wearing a semblance of my face

I have examined the Fibonacci spirals
and been entranced by the scrawls
and recitations of numbers —
are they really the language of the universe (?) —
the clouds above the courtyard
prevent me from seeing —
the ones and ones, the twos,
the threes, fives, eights, thirteens,
and so forth — I have stumbled
over the toruses and hypercubes
left in my way.
       And there are amazing doors
doors which I do not know how to open
and I have thought
            about escape —
by the well of glowing water
  on the chest of crooked drawers
I sing, and write,
      and, frenetically, sleep —
at times certain drawers open
  revealing,


      sometimes, keys.