She was so tired of I She thought she might kill her
but that was too much in sync with society’s violence
so She just sent I to Libya for a while, which, come
to think of it, struck She as potentially more dangerous.
She’s maxed out on I’s gripes and wiles, worse than
Berryman’s plus less original. She can’t read another
syllable about I’s nasty childhood, current ills,
her aches either in the organ meat or in opaque layers
of abstraction. She knows I’s tricks, her jokes;
She finds them juvenile. She wishes I would reinvent
herself, take herself to task, to heart, to a Devon
swannery, to the moon. She used have a tolerance
for I, like the tolerance She’s old teacher would
from time to time note that some ancient bard
(Auden?) had for a rare rhetorical strategy or twist
of syntax. A tolerance, good Dubie would explain.
I must know She’s lost it, that grace or patience
She once sent I’s way. Now I is out of Africa, yet
She claims she won’t see her, hear her, think of her.
I hopes this all eventually blows over;
She and I share too much history to throw it all away.
